Next time you’re at an Aerosmith concert- which is the type of humanatarian atrocity you often commit because you have the same laughable sense of taste in music as Homer Simpson and literally every artist you like is music that you’ve forgotten that you initially got into ironically- look out at the back of the crowd for a paunchy man in leather trousers and a faded ‘Toys in the Attic’ tour t-shirt and the kind of haircut that men only grow when they’re either unwilling or unable to accept that they’re bald. He’ll be disgusted that the band aren’t playing cheap Rolling Stones pastiches- a band that, lest we forget, are fucking shit in the first place- about a teenage girl having electric vaginal spasms, or whatever

they’ll be muttering to themselves

+20

Here’s something to try next time you’re at a Pixies gig, while you’re convincing yourself that this is just the same as seeing one of the greatest ever rock bands back in the late 80s when they were truly revolutionary, and not just some creatively bankrupt middle-aged fatties embarrassingly sweating their way through an expensive karaoke set. This is, bizarrely, something you frequently do, despite not being born when ‘Trumpe Le Monde’ was released, and making absolutely no effort to recognise how often and how comprehensively the band are equalled and bettered these days, because you are so lazy that you only appreciate culture that has been aged for 20 freaking years and declared ‘classic’ by Q Magazine.

At the back of the crowd, there’ll be a geeky middle aged man picking his nose in a faded ‘Daydream Nation’ t-shirt, lamenting the fact that the band no longer soundtrack him being thin and attractive. And not wanting to slit his wrists every time his kids tell them about what they learnt at school that day

they’ll be muttering to themselves

+36

 

Next time you’re at a Radiohead gig

pretending that it’s the least listenable Squaepusher pastiches that you want to hear, when secretly hoping they play the bangers, have a look at the back of the crowd. There’ll be someone there, someone with the raw magnetism of a sexual Catherine Wheel and who looks so damn cool it’s all you can do to stop yourself wiping your vagina up and down his leg in an animalistic claim to ground, who is tired of the band turning themselves inside out in a ridiculous effort to sound ‘experimental’, when all they’re really doing is referencing different musical artists. This person misses the days when they wouldn’t reject their pop abilities, when they weren’t afraid to tear the house down

they’ll be muttering to themselves

+35

 

Next time you’re at a Jimmy Page Gig blah blah blah blah blah blah paedophilia

blah blah blah blah blah blah charlaton blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah worst band ever blah blah blah they’ll be someone at the back disappointed that his wife is actually well over the age of consent

you’ll hear her mutter

+39

I fell in love with Wild Beasts at a festival- which I won’t name as I want to disguise how ridiculously middle-class I am- sometime in 2007 or 2008. On the main stage were some deathly dull indie band that were tipped to be amazing but were instead as distinctive and well-defined as an old flannel floating in a bucket of cow saliva

So, I quickly grew disinterested and wondered over to a smaller stage. There, I saw a incredibly daft, bizarre, and wonderful band, playing a demented and rhapsodic indie music with two singers, one of whom sounded like Harry Enfield playing a far too broad choirboy character. I fell in love instantly

+27

Ten years later, this is the band’s fifth album, and they are in no way the band I fell in love with

-5

 

They’re no way near as bonkers, their music is more (spit) mature, they’re a lot more interested in sexy-sexy-fun-time than they used to be

, and the crazy choirboy doesn’t even make appearances any more. They’re not even an indie band any more, so there’ll be no appearance from Frank Zappa in this critique, instead now making something more akin to moody electronica. They’ve turned completely 180 from the band I once loved

-3

They are, however, an infinitely better band

+32

‘Boy King’ may well be their finest hour, and probably the first of their ‘adult’ synthesised album to constantly reach the anthemic and melodic heights of their debut, so it’s disappointing that it’ll likely be their last

+37

Just before I wrote this <careful, you’ll expose the business- Ed> it was announced that the band will be splitting up, and if there’s any justice they’ll be afforded the recognition their extraordinarily consistent back catalogue deserves, and the music fans of the early 21st century, who instead wasted their precious time on ironically appreciating crap 80s stadium rock and pretending The Smiths had more than a handful of great songs, will be exposed for the fools they are

+43

 

Metacritic: +78

79, 83, 85, 86: that, you bunch of ignorant numpties, is a back catalogue

Length: 39 minutes +7

Best Lyric: ‘Pull the sorrow from between my legs like silk/Knot after knot after knot/The audience applauds/But we can’t hear them’ +1

Number of AMAZING songs: 1 (+10)

…But Are All the Rest of the Songs Kinda Amazing Anyway? Yessir! +100

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total: 489

http://wildbeasts.dominomart.com/