Wild Beasts in the Present Tense

For England's Wild Beasts pop music, class, and gender aren't easily separated. What makes this more than a simple pop cliche is the band's approach to the question of masculinity. The kind of masculinity that appears across their four albums is as diverse as it is arcane; instead  of attempting to embody an abstract ideal or essence, Wild Beasts' approach might better be described as an exploration what it means to be manly at different moments in time. Their latest release announces as much in its title, but, as always with Wild Beasts, what first appears as a naive truism masks a darker story.

Since their 2008 debut, Limbo, Panto, Wild Beasts have walked a compelling balance between hedonism, wit, and musical precision, all the while providing self-conscious caricatures of their own virility. Their fourth album, Present Tense, continues their trend towards more tightly wound pop productions, abandoning the cocksure sounds of other current British rock bands for the delicate textures of 80s pop and R&B; and while it doesn't surpass the high water mark of 2009's Two Dancers, Present Tense is a definite improvement over the spare, fragile Smother. As co-vocalist Hayden Thorpe put it in a recent interview, "there was a real purpose of stepping out of the ruins of Smother, which was a very bruised and defeated record in many ways." Where Limbo, Panto presented a compelling but disorganized tour of young libido, Smother followed the logic to its breaking point, losing listeners (like me) along the way. Unlike its predecessors, Present Tense is, despite its titular pun and garish cover art, a relaxed and spacious pop record that relies more on crystalline synths than the taut strings of a guitar.

Present Tense trades the darkest undertones of the Wild Beats' previous work for a more playful and ambiguous sendup of the present. "Wanderlust," their galloping opener takes its cue from King Lear,  giving the finger to wealth and the class groomed to possess it. "We're decadent beyond our means," taunts Thorpe, "They're solemn in their wealth, we're high in our poverty . . . With us the world feels voluptuous." As with other Wild Beasts records, the interplay between vocalists Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming -- a foppish falsetto and throaty baritone, respectively -- allows for the simultaneous appearance of different thematic registers: Thorpe's vocals prance through the clouds, while Fleming's are rooted to the earth. Along with their first single, "Sweet Spot," the best example of this, Present Tense's brief, glam-pop performance "A Simple Beautiful Truth," transitions perfectly from the album's pensive centrepiece, "Pregnant Pause." By this point, the aura sounds effortless: the R&B of Fleming's fluid bass finds its companion in a glittering 80s synth line, helping make good on the promise of "Sweet Spot," that "godly state," sings Thorpe, "Where the real and the dream may consummate." These fleeting moments appear to suggest the kind of bourgeois acceptance that the Wild Beasts, in until this point, had seemed to parody. But towards the album's end the narrative changes yet again in order to reveal these reproduced moments of pop perfection for the nostalgic constructions they are.

Unlike previous Wild Beasts releases, the romance on Present Tense seems to move beyond satire and jest to what might pass as honest enjoyment. On "Mecca" Thorpe builds on the existential embrace of "Wanderlust," describing history's collapse into a single moment of erotic love: "Cause all we want is to know the vivid moment / Yeah, how we feel now is felt by the Ancients." Similarly, the album closer, "Palace," finds Thorpe arriving again at that romantic moment, unguarded and able to achieve an intimate vantage: "In detail you are even more beautiful than from afar / I could learn you like the blinded would do, feeling their way through the dark." The catch to all this is that this kind of intimacy doesn't come without a lot of historical baggage. On "Past Perfect" Thorpe dismisses the possibility of a "perfect present," instead admitting to a present that is characterized by an irreducible tension. His explanation reads like a moralistic nursery rhyme: "Our hurt is older than our hands / It passed from monkey into man / Now tender hands do heal the hurt / Man did fuck up / and then he learnt." But the learning is not over. For the Wild Beasts of Present Tense, what counts as masculine cannot escape its own historical confusion or triumph over modern disillusionment. Here, in other words, is no simple resolution, but the end of a category that knows its time is up.

Below: A new video from my favourite album of 2009 (Two Dancers by Wild Beasts) for one of its best tracks, "We Still Got The Taste Dancin' On Our Tongues." This video instantly brings to mind the movie Gladiator - remember Russel Crowe floating over those wheat fields? - and the music video for one of my least favourite gen-x anthems, "Disarm" - remember seeing Billy, James, D'arcy and Jimmy floating over suburbia whist playing their instruments and channeling the angst of a thousand broken teenagers? Of course you do!

all hallows eve (a list of sorts)

It's a pretty safe bet that at most of tonight's Halloween parties people will make a REALLY big deal out of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Ahh...he's back from the dead! I also wouldn't be surprised to hear an ironic shout out to Bobby Pickett's "Monster Mash." I used to hate the song, but now it reminds me of my favourite episode of Freaks and Geeks. And you can expect there to be a lot of folks dressed up like characters from Donnie Darko - especially the combination of a skeleton body suit with a zip up hoody from American Apparel. When I saw it in grade 10, Donnie Darko defined Halloween for me: the music (both the original score and the songs by Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Tears for Fears, etc.), the eerie suburban setting, the freaky costumes, the whole atmosphere really. So what if the plot about time travel is pretty much incomprehensible and the straight to video sequel looks like absolute garbage. If nothing else, Donnie Darko captured the mood (see Bat for Lashes' video for "What's a Girl to do"), the macabre spirit of 80's for all of us who were 20 years too late.

Here's my list of albums that go bump in the night. In other words, it'd be a grave mistake to spin these records on a sunny afternoon. It's probably a good thing I'm not having a party because, as you can see from this list, it'd be a real downer...














Adore - Smashing Pumpkins (1998)
This dark but unexpected departure for the band was the first without their previous drummer, J.C., and a quickly turned into therapeutic project for Corgan after the loss of his mother. Featuring late Victorian style photography and oodles of over the top gothic costumes, skeletal song structures, flirations with electronica, and barely-there vocals, this subdued departure was also the Pumpkins' last great album.















Random Spirit Lover - Sunset Rubdown (2007)
Everyone seems to have forgotten about this album, now that the critically acclaimed Dragonslayer is out. Personally, I prefer the extended meanderings of Spenser Krug to the tightly wound pop of the band's latest release. This was an album that channelled a host of spirits in carnivalesque celebration.















Disintegration - The Cure (1989)
Seems like an obvious choice, but what's so bad about that? Droning synths and lush orchestration. The Cure have a lot of albums that could be on this list, but Disintegration remains my favourite, probably because I discovered it at the perfect time.















Limbo, Panto - Wild Beasts (2008)
Though this year's Two Dancers is touted as a step forward for the band, I was pretty satisfied with their heavier debut. Songs like "His Grinning Skull" and "She Purred, While I Grrred" can't be replicated - the seedy nihilism of Limbo, Panto is almost intoxicating.















Mezzanine - Massive Attack (1998)
I don't think there's a better rainy day album. It's industrial: slick, lethal ("Inertia Creeps") and all of a sudden so chilled out ("Exchange"). The first time I heard "Teardrop" I kept it on repeat for hours. This album manages to evoke a wide spectrum of moods, while maintaining a stylish core of consumer malaise on the road to perdition.















Ocean Rain - Echo and the Bunnymen (1984)
I must confess, I only really got into this album after seeing Donnie Darko, but since then I've sung its praises. "Killing Moon" and "Thorn of Crowns" are perfectly sinister, full of epic ambition and metaphysical jargon.















Maxinquaye - Tricky (1995)
He sampled "Suffer" by the Smashing Pumpkins (appropriately named "Pumpkin") and hasn't come close to this sort of consistency or execution since this was released in the mid-90s. He named the album after his mother, Maxin Quaye. "Aftermath" is undoubtedly one of coolest tracks ever, managing to sample both Blade Runner and Marvin Gaye. And there's a flute! Tricky gets all the credit, but its really his then-girlfriend Martina Topley-Bird, whose angelic vocals contrast Tricky's grit, that steals the show.

This Halloween, the most interesting/disturbing but eerily appropriate band is without a doubt England's Wild Beasts. I've sung there praises before and this year they've usurped the title, previously held by Sunset Rubdown. Halloween is, I think, the perfect autumn holiday because, in this season especially, the presence of death is so obviously everywhere that it's impossible to ignore. The golden harvest is over, but clusters of brightly coloured leaves hang on to bare branches with doomed resilience. The frailty, the beauty of time's passage, is never so immediate.

What began as a pagan festival, seemingly baptised by the Catholic Church's decision to relocate All Saints Day to the first of November (which was also the beginning of the new year until it was overrided by the Church), is still more or less pagan; and perhaps we need that (pagan) freedom to name death, to locate that absence which the saints have passed through, to find true communion. When you think about what Halloween's become --children in costumes visiting the houses of strangers and asking for candy-- it's easy to get cynical (especially for the particularly pietistic).

I complain about Halloween for a number of reasons. Some of them are more valid than others. Most of them have more to do with consumer culture and my own laziness. But thinking about the holiday's evolution, from an "pagan" pre-Christian festival to a failed product of Western empire-building renews my interest and appreciation in what is one of the weirdest holidays on the calendar. Fall is undoubtably my favourite season. I just wish it wasn't so damn cold.

precursor to Radio Scars

To honour the tradition of Radio Scars (an annual drunken discussion in which I'm taking part tonight with my brothers in angst): three videos from the past year that privilege adolescence and blast social perceptions of any kind, because no one understands and they never will because the gravity of every situation is just too much to handle and so on and so forth.

Feel the catharsis, exorcise that alienation!

"The Devil's Crayon" by Wild Beasts from Limbo, Panto


"Kim and Jessie" by M83 from Saturdays=Youth


"Our Age" by Constantines from Kensington Heights

a taste of indulgence to come

Either more inspired thanks to the usual flurry of year-end blog activity, or empowered by the presence of my top ten list in Stylus magazine's year end feature, I couldn't resist starting things off with the albums that have driven me into seclusion over the last 12 months. Why anyone cares at this point, I'd love to know.

1. Deerhunter - Microcastle/Weird Era Cont

No album this year has absorbed me like Microcastle­, Deerhunter’s follow-up to the one-two punch of 2007’s Cryptograms and Fluorescent Grey EP. Seamlessly paced, Microcastle is driven by a nostalgic love affair with feedback and melody. Beginning with the soothing “Cover Me (Slowly),” Deerhunter’s lazy euphoria finally stumbles into the broken chords of “Activa.” But just when they appear to lose his steam, Deerhunter launch into “Nothing Ever Happened,” an impossible epic that explodes into an all-out prog-jam. Once Microcastle draws you inside, there’s no getting out.

2. Chad VanGaalen - Soft Airplane

Chad VanGaalen sounds joyfully at ease on Soft Airplane, his third album since debuting in 2005 with Infiniheart, a wonderfully dysfunctional collection of self-produced experimental folk-rock. The Calgary native dipped into the same pool of material for his 2006 follow-up, the Polaris Prize nominated Skelliconnection. Soft Airplane marks a new stage in VanGaalen’s catalogue: it’s his first offering of newly written material, recorded with an album in mind, and it shows. Amidst the garage crunch of “Inside the Molecules,” VanGaalen sounds truly content, while the sublime catchiness of “City of Electric Light” and the ecstatic electro-pop of “TMNT Mask” display VanGaalen in top form. With lyrics that fascinate and puzzle, VanGaalen’s chilling voice is unmistakable; as with his other albums, the artwork, like the music, is all his own, always twisted but eerily familiar.

3. Portishead - Third

What more could be said about this chilling assualt on the senses? Everyone makes mention of the long gap between Third and its predecessor and the fact that it sounds nothing like the smooth trip-hop Portishead helped define in the late 90s. Still, I think we all underestimated them and their ability to evolve and adapt. There's word of a Fourth on the way. I can't wait to see what Portishead does next.

4. Constantines - Kensington Heights
One of the few popular Canadian bands that still wears its punk politics on its sleeve, Constantines didn't release their best album this year, but they managed to open up their sound with an added urgency and made some intriguing theological statements in the process. Springsteen eat your heart out.

5. Times New Viking - Rip It Off

Some can't get past the audible feedback "hiss" that carries each track, but this pastiche of 90s DIY indie-rock is an indispensible testament to the incestuous nature of popular music. Loaded with melody, this helps make up for years of disgraceful major-label "punk-pop" sludge.

6. Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Real Emotional Trash
Post-Pavement (sigh), but engaging and surefooted - maybe a little too smooth. I don't care. Malkmus doesn't scare me off when he gets proggy and just having Janet Weiss pounding out beats is enough to make this a satisfying "prog rock" album, entact with Malkmus' usual drugged out self-reflexive jibberish - something I'll never get tired of.

7. NOMO - Ghost Rock

With their third album, NOMO had the sound I'd been waiting to hear all year. Always promised, never delivered. Ghost Rock had legs, a jazz record running through post-punk, treading lightly through the afrobeat revivalism that seemed to define this year's releases.

8. The Magnetic Fields - Distortion
First of all, its a brilliant pop album that should be recognized as such -with one of the best female vocalists around. Second, its soaked in feedback and sustains the novelty (the irony?) straight through songs that treat sex and alcohol like sacramental fixations.

9. Wild Beasts - Limbo, Panto
Chris Talbot, possesses a tight falsetto that can soar like Morrissey and a cathartic growl that brings to mind Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes. Talbot croons overtop waltzing guitars and tribal drums that never cease to sound like a death-rattle on repeat. Exhibitionists to the bitter end, Wild Beasts have discovered a cabaret in a cemetery, or in the final words of “Cheerio Chaps, Cheerio Goodbye,” they have created “a requiem in a circus tent.”

10. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazuras, Dig!!!

Quite honestly, this is the first Nick Cave album I've really stuck with. It's worth its weight in critical acclaim, not least for the twisted nature of its concept, the gall of Cave's wordplay, or the uncanny work of the Bad Seeds.

11. M83 - Saturdays=Youth

12. Women - Women

13. The Walkmen - You & Me

14. TV on the Radio - Dear Science,

15. - Juana Molina - Un Dia