Wild Beasts – All the King’s Men
Kendal boys still not quite mint…
[Video][Website]
[5.29]
John Seroff: “Hooting and Howling” left me utterly cold, so it’s a pleasant surprise to discover Wild Beasts bear some attention after all. An outré, moody man-child Tears for Fears style mashup of “California Girls” and The Wicker Man doesn’t sound like a good idea, but “All The King’s Men” is an unlikely slow burner. There’s a little XTC in there, a little Smiths, a little Adam Ant, a little castle guard from The Wizard of Oz and a kernel of something unique and interesting worth waiting to surface. A nice jumble of opposing impulses: uptempo and dark, bouncy and grounded, emotional and insouciant.
[7]
Martin Kavka: I’m a pushover for a powerful shufflebeat, and when it’s paired with a vocal that sounds as if it’s from a boys’ choir led by a guy whose voice has recently broken, I’m putty. The lyrics aren’t typically indie fare, either; they seem to be an indictment of boys who say they love women but end up cruelly turning them into their mothers.
[8]
Chuck Eddy: I’m a sucker for fake Tarzan music with a “Rock And Roll Part 2” beat, so I actually somewhat enjoy this until Mr. Prissy Pants comes in and starts yelping. Dude’s got nothing on David Surkamp, the guy who used to yelp for Pavlov’s Dog in the ’70s, I’ll tell you that. (“Geddy Lee on laughing gas,” wrote one critic; “Marty Balin crossed with a vacuum cleaner,” wrote another — you should check him out!) But at least the high-voiced twit has a vocal personality, more than you can claim for his baritoned foil. Who nonetheless carries his cardboard ably enough here to make it to the finish line in one piece.
[5]
Matt Cibula: Remember all those rapturous reviews of Fleet Foxes? Thus do the chickens come home to roost, whoop-ing all the way.
[1]
Tal Rosenberg: Not sure why these guys don’t receive as much praise as, say, Grizzly Bear, since I hear virtually the same elements, except Wild Beasts don’t sound like they’re lost in a fog of whimsy and stateliness. Instead, the drums hit a little harder, the instrumentation a little more defined and unfettered by effects. The guttural intonations of the singing could be done away with, and the song is boilerplate indie rock, but not offensively so. Bonus point for making the video a G-rated version of Antichrist, which is basically the video for Crazy Town’s “Butterfly”, except that’s got a lot more neon, piercings, tattoos, and shirtless bros.
[6]
Anthony Miccio: If I hadn’t watched the video, I would have assumed someone was playing with the vocal pitch on a Tears For Fears song.
[5]
Alfred Soto: What happened to Big Country after we Yanks failed to send another “In a Big Country” into the top twenty? Maybe they upset the space/time continuum to record a track with Bloc Party. Post-post punk guitar, tribal chant and drums, lyrics with vague sociopolitical undertones and a soupcon of romantic tension — we could have gotten behind these once upon a time if they all meant something besides an impressive Rolodex.
[5]