August 20th, 2009 8:32am
Equally Elegant And Ugly
Wild Beasts “Hooting & Howling”
As per usual, the most fascinating and alluring thing about this Wild Beasts song is the vocal tone and mannerisms of Hayden Thorpe. The man sings like a street tramp affecting the style and grace of an opera diva, resulting in songs that are at once disarmingly beautiful and disorienting in their outright weirdness. As the band have progressed, they’ve gravitated toward a spare, romantic guitar style that makes them sound like something an alternate universe version of ’80s U2 in which The Edge is forced to reckon with serving the aesthetics of a silly, foppish oddball rather than the world-beating earnestness of Bono.
Buy it from Amazon.
8/21/09 1:09 pm
THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE 638TH BEST SONG OF THE DECADE, NESTLED BETWEEN “NUMA NUMA” (637) AND THE EMPIRE CARPET & FLOORING AD JINGLE (639)
TRY AGAIN NEXT DECADE, WILD BEASTS!
8/23/09 6:09 pm
At least the dude can do a decent falsetto, and they’re not hammering your skull with half-note kicks like everyone else who’s pretending it’s the 80’s.