Last year Alt-J stormed onto the music scene, winning fans, critical acclaim and The Mercury Prize, a pretty good year by anyone’s standards. As a product of their moody ethereal music and high-pitched singing Alt-J have been compared by many to Radiohead, however I feel that a far more accurate comparison would be with Leeds-based band Wild Beasts.
Wild Beasts have much in common with Alt-J. They write moody atmospheric pieces, often with sinister lyrics but always with catchy melodies. In Hayden Thorpe they have a front man whose voice you’re either going to love or hate. But, above all, they too are a great British band making uncompromising music to the delight of their fans. Wild Beasts, like Alt-J, make albums and not songs.
Wild Beasts were nominated for 2009’s Mercury Prize with their second album, Two Dancers, which saw them refine their sound from their often over-theatrical debut album Limbo, Panto. Fans of Alt-J will probably find a greater affinity with Two Dancers than either of Wild Beasts’ other two albums because it is easily the darkest of the three. For example, it features ‘All the King’s Men’, a song which is apparently about arranged marriages among the upper classes and refers to young girls as ‘birthing machines’.
Wild Beasts followed Two Dancers in 2011 with their third album Smother. Smother is arguably slightly poppier than either of their previous efforts but nevertheless refuses to compromise on their artistic vision. In an interview with Cherwell last year, Hayden Thorpe railed against the limited range of music played on BBC Radio One, saying that it was still the desire of the band to achieve a number one. The balance between trying to reach lots of people and remaining true to your own musical ethos was obviously something which Thorpe found frustrating.
With the success of Alt-J perhaps this problem is already being corrected. If you were one of the people who rewarded Alt-J’s musical vision by going out and buying/ downloading their album, then there is a pretty good chance that you’ll like Wild Beasts too.
