Before the night began I bumped into Tom Fleming. He was in good spirits. and well aware that this return to Leeds on a national tour brought high expectations. The band were feeling they would have to make it special. The last time I saw them at The Cockpit was in the smaller room, barely half-full, way back in the summer of 2006. Even then it was obvious that this band were the most interesting, accomplished and original set of sounds and attitudes in the City. But audiences are cautious - bright dawns and new Messiahs are listed every other week on the ever-busy Leeds Music Scene website.
No matter. Regard has kept on growing since then. Bad Sneakers have handed on the recording side of the band's affairs to Domino and two albums in a year have winded a lot of critics, who blew approving gasps of breath, out into the quality press as well as the music papers and ezines. Tonight's gig does indeed carry a burden of high expectations.
Inside, later, the room is full from stage to back wall. Significantly, Ben Little's guitar rack holds two red and white Burns guitars where once stood one. The second has that special whammy bar from the Hank Marvin Signature model. Everything is tuned, set up and ready. "Wait ten minutes" goes the message to back stage (as if excited impatience needed stoking any further).
The next hour or so is a blur of euphoric pleasure. The repertoire for what (I suppose) counts in national terms as a "new" band has at least 30 songs that I know about - with two albums, singles and demos readily available for performances. As a result, every song they play is a classic. "His Grinning Skull" "Hooting and Howling" "All The Kings Men", "Woebegone Wanderers", "Devils' Crayon", "Our Lot" ... on and on. It's what old journalists used to call an embarrassment of riches. As performers they were always fluent, but this tour is finding them in exuberant form - spooling out the complex music as if it was child's play. Keyboards, guitars and bass are shared around and vocals come from everyone.
The audience are amazingly attentive. I spent two numbers pressed up against the stage for the first couple of songs, and gradually worked backwards to see how things looked, sounded and felt from the rest of the room. People weren't doing the standard go mental thing that counts, in some parts, as appreciation. I was a bit anxious. But looking more closely, a couple of things become clear. For one, the bar is selling no beer. Only the odd one or two desperadoes are squeezing out through the exits for emergency top-ups. There is none of the seen-it-all-before-wake-me up-if-it-gets-interesting chat that plagues too many gigs these days. Everyone is craning to see the stage, eyes shining, bodies moving gently in time, mouthing lyrics, paying close attention and dropping jaws. Applause is strong and fierce after each song, but its curtailed and disciplined to make sure the next one starts as soon as possible. Many of them look educated and thoughtful, as if they might have read a book or two, browsed an art gallery, or know something about Fauvism. This is good.
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It's as if a generation of intelligent music fans over the age of 16 have been given what they never had in their own formative years - romantic, social, danceable, articulate and musically deft pop songs untainted by retrophilia or mawkishness. WILD BEASTS do none of the stage histrionics that demand shrieks, air punching or chants. Intellect is allowed, even encouraged (but not, of couse, compulsory). A recent article in Faber/Domino's new journal "Loops", contributed in the form of an extended lyric by Thorpe and Fleming aligns their aesthetic with the New Vorticist movement: "Some pink fleshed apes / will choose to remain in the zoo / having grown fond of their cage. / While others who do remember the forest / will use their warm legs to carry them / to their keepers' throats"
Tonight they roared.
The evening had been opened, as it will be for all of this tour, by BLUE ROSES (aka Laura Groves, from nearby Bradford). Sadie Anderson is playing violin and adding vocals. Josh Taylor is offering some drums, guitar and more vocals. (Josh also appears in multiple roles on the BLUE ROSES album on Salvia XL). Laura's ethereal melodies and smiling presence are given a darker texture by Anderson's rich tone and flowing lines. The contrast between then works very well, giving Laura more space to do the shy smiles and to close her eyes as she plays against the more knowing and confident gaze of her new band mate. Songs like "Coast" have timeless appeal. Vashti Bunyan, Bridget St. John, The Unthanks - none of them the same, but each of them in that intimate space where young dreams and harsh truths can be gently stirred together to beguilingly unsettling effect.
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