Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
Remember the days of landfill indie? No, really, try and remember them because it’s important to remember the bad times so we can appreciate the good. Cumbria’s Wild Beasts may use guitars, drums and vocals and all be men, but they’re also evidence that using those instruments need not make you The Courteeners. For their second album, these four super intelligent young men decided to play about with time signatures, tamper with ideas of love and sex and throw out the rulebook that stated it wasn’t a good idea for white men to mess about with falsetto. Two Dancers is a complex, densely layered concoction that swirls about on a maelstrom of highly strung guitars and pounding drums, but somewhere in the middle gorgeous melodies start to appear as on the wonderfully catchy, ‘All The King’s Men’. As with Dirty Projectors or Grizzly Bear, the band are aware of how sounds play off each other, of how well harmonies can coalesce with sudden blasts of noise and then simmer down to something beautiful. Basically, it’s enough to warrant much excitement as to where they might go next.
Key track: ‘All The King’s Men’
Oh dear oh dear. Last week wasn't the qualified success many of us had hoped for. First of all, Cornershop missed the top 75 altogether, MSTRKRFT and John Legend entered at no. 50 on the singles chart and most miraculously of all, Sandi Thom's collection of her best work seems to have fallen on deaf ears. We're assuming this is some kind of clerical error and we'll be rectified soon, but until then why don't you all go off and listen to 'I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker' and wait with baited breath.
Let's get down to business shall we?
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Complete Me by Frankmusik
Frankmusik, aka Vincent Frank, looks, how can we put this, like a bit of a bell-end. He looks like some kind of mutant creation, grown in a lab somewhere by a major label who added all the ingredients of a 'popstar' - the hair, the '80s influences, the dead-eyed stare - into a test tube and out popped Frankmusik. Luckily, his debut album negates his face and makes up for any urges the listener might have to give him a bit of a slap. '3 Little Words' and 'Better Off As Two' are stone-cold pop classics, 'Gotta Boyfriend?' is deliriously catchy and 'Done, Done' proves that when he wants to he can tackle a moody ballad. Co-produced by Stuart 'forgive me for The Killers' Price, Complete Me is the best album of 2009 to feature a man named Vincent.
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Two Dancers by Wild Beasts
We haven't heard this album, but we have read a lot of good things about it. So, if you have it then please let us know what it's like. (We're well aware that we could listen to it on Spotify but we don't have it because it's new and everyone's going on about it which makes us uneasy).
EDIT: We have a copy now. Phew.
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'Basic Space' by The XX
The XX's debut album, XX, is one of the best things we've heard all year. Most of it sounds like Timbaland remixing The Cure on half-speed. At this year's Latitude the band (all about 17 years old) seemed so shy they almost ground their way into the stage such was the awkward shuffling of feet. This particular track isn't necessarily the most obvious single (we would have gone for 'Islands'), but it's a strangely beautiful concoction with singers Oliver and Romy exchanging lovelorn lines like a drunk Romeo & Juliet over some sparse, percussive beats. You can hear it right here.
