WILD BEASTS
Limbo, Panto
(Domino)

By Todd Lavoie

I find myself flirting with hyperbole when I ponder the preening, careening chaos that is Limbo, Panto, the debut from Leeds, England's elegantly lurid Wild Beasts - and I fear I may give in.

Hearing the disc for the first time was a bit of a blindsiding experience, and successive listens have confirmed for me what I'd felt on that initial spin: these guys are clearly out on their own, hurling every idea in their lusty little hearts up against the wall, eager to see which ones stick. Mercifully, nearly every one of the quartet's fits of whimsy does stick - many of them, in fact, do so with spectacular results.

The oh-so-young band members - 21 is the median age - arrive fresh-faced but fully confident in their abilities, willfully weird and defiant of current musical trends and ready for a cult of devotees to wrap tightly around them, clinging to every word. Have I succumbed to hyperbole yet? Not quite, I suppose, but they aren't making it easy for me, either.

Regarding the ready-for-a-cult-following thing: I'm dead serious. Limbo, Panto is a bewitching and bizarre opening statement, gushing freely in a tongue of its own design, thus offering plenty of wiggle-room for multiple interpretations. Archaic colloquialisms, curious turns of phrase, and troubling metaphors abound - lovers of wordplay should rejoice, to be sure. In this sense, there's a touch of a linguistic kinship with another band of iconoclasts originally hailing from the same English Lake District village of Kendal as this fearsome, frolicsome foursome: the equally eccentric British Sea Power.

Then there's the manner in which Wild Beasts' dictionary-breaking rush of ideas is conveyed: time-signature changes sprout forth at the most unexpected moments, traditional verse/chorus/verse arrangements receive considerable tweaking, and the proceedings generally remain tantalizingly oblique even after repeated listens. No jukebox anthems here, but the band suffuses their oddball-pop with such power that it isn't too far-fetched to imagine these whirling, prancing slugfests as fist-pumpers in a decidedly more fey universe.

The focal point of their lean, jittery vibrations is one Hayden Thorpe, a vocalist with an astonishing range matched perhaps only by the defiance with which he delivers such operatics. Blessed with a falsetto comparable at times to that of Jimmy Somerville (of Bronski Beat and Communards fame, before taking his turn as a solo diva), Billy Mackenzie (the Associates), or early-career Russell Mael (Sparks), Thorpe can also just as easily slip into a velvety croon (echoes of Antony Hegarty from Antony and the Johnsons) or a rabid growl (insert foamy-mouthed mammal of choice here).

In many cases, such oscillations occur within the same line of the song. Occasionally, the sliding-and-diving appears to take place within the same note. The ins-and-outs of sexual orientation seem to be given be a good 'n' hard blurring-over as well: much of Limbo, Panto could be read with a gay-male sensitivity, but there are enough hetero-spirited lyrics found here to counter otherwise.

Ultimately, who cares? The disc, after all, celebrates sonic-exploration with enviable vim and vigor - perhaps it's fair to say that Wild Beasts could be serving up the same enthusiasm in regards to matters of the bedroom? Thinking long and hard over the history of British pop - a strain which has displayed a considerably greater level of comfort with matters of gender/sexual fluidity over the years than its American counterpart - I am reminded of an another startling, leave-the-questions-unanswered debut, albeit from many years ago. The album in question? Suede's self-titled Nude/Columbia debut, released in 1993. Wild Beasts might not be approaching similar subject matter with the same glam theatrics as Suede did back in the day, but they could very well be the most exciting voice since then to pick up the thread of conversation.

That said, it's hardly an understatement to claim that Wild Beasts are daring, divisive stuff: listeners are likely to either "get it" on the first few listens or abandon it entirely. This is a group, after all, which might dabble occasionally in camp, but never revels in it - and as much as they might strut out their radiant plumage and delicate features, I don't doubt for a minute that they couldn't spar with the best of 'em.

Morrissey would be proud: at the core of Limbo, Panto is a pugilist's heart, and it pounds away with discernible I-dare-ya throughout the disc. It is this juxtaposition of hard-and-soft which will likely confuse many. Glam might still remain our closest common antecedent for such striking contrasts, but there isn't a great deal here which could be described as glam music.

More often than not, Thorpe delivers frothing operatics over nervy, angular guitar-driven atmospheres that appear equally indebted to funk, disco, circus tunes, and '80s indie-pop. The foursome named themselves after the Fauvist art movement, after all - "Les Fauves" is French for "Wild Beasts" - and thus they pay homage to artists such as Henri Matisse and Andre Derain with their bold strokes and bursting colors.

Musically speaking, to find the most likely touchstones, you'll probably have to head as far back as the Reagan/Thatcher era - specifically, to the skewed disco-not-disco flamboyance of Mackenzie's Associates and the taut white-boy jitter-funk of Orange Juice. Throw in a gladiola-gilded sprinkle of the Smith's self-titled Rough Trade/Sire Records debut, while you're at it. Close your eyes, and you might even convince yourself that the '90s and '00s never happened.

Disc opener "Vigil for a Fuddy Duddy" is a statement of purpose/make-it-or-break-it/love-us-or-leave-us/you-name-it moment: starting off innocently enough with a slow-rolling martial rhythm, the track only takes eight seconds to announce the band's singularity, arriving in the form of a swooping multi-octave caterwaul from Thorpe. From there, the song manages to simultaneously stalk and soar; for every jungle-crawl exerted by drummer Chris Talbot and bassist Tom Fleming, Thorpe glides above it all with gorgeous flights of falsetto. Guitarist Benny Little provides the eloquent voice of the push-and-pull between the earthbound and the heaven-seeking, offering up nimble switch-offs between Afropop-recalling textures and rippling atmospherics.

And then there are the lyrics, tauntingly obtuse and groaned, howled, and battled out in equal measures: "Hug it to me, and the rubber raspberries/With wantingly wet mouth I suck…remind me of your gentle fuck." The printed page or computer screen hardly does them the justice served by Thorpe's confrontationally carnal vocal abandon.

The hints of sunny Afropop alluded to on "Vigil" are treated to a finer spotlight on the borderline-romantic "The Devil's Crayon," wherein perky summer-afternoon guitar funk is helped along by a thumping tribal-drum roll. Here, Fleming shows off his own suave, silky croon - a seductive instrument in its own right - only to be joined by Thorpe's unbridled yelp. It's an electrifying contrast - and hopefully one which the band will explore further in the future. "Woebegone Wanderers" slides deftly between rubbery-bass, nylon-string guitar disco - and here the Billy Mackenzie-meets-Orange Juice description feels particularly apt - and delirious circus oompah wobbles.

For all of the emphasis being given here and elsewhere in the press for Thorpe's vocal acrobatics, immeasurable praise must be given to his bandmates, for the agility with which they can switch from "Heart of Glass"-isms to carny-sounds is largely what keeps such daring enterprises from falling apart in the first place. Still, who could possibly overlook the riveting emptying of Thorpe's vocal trick bag on the song, particularly as he throws himself full-bodied into the following? "A slap on the arse from my baby/The hiss and the sting/and the mark of a ring/And the cold reality."

Check out the video for "The Devil's Crayon":

"The Old Dog" - with its too-perfect piano-and-handclaps breakdowns - offers Wild Beasts in one of their more comparably sedate moments, and there are a few guitar passages contained within which wouldn't feel at all out of place on the Smiths' eponymous debut. Lyrically sparse, the song does still manage to squeeze in a few infinitely quotable little pearls, one of which seems readymade for sloganeering from the fanboys and fangirls: "Darling I regret/there's life in the old dog yet." "Please, Sir" makes a twirling, pirouetting foray into Persuaders/Platters-styled soda-fountain melodrama - delivered, of course, in snarling, strutting fist-raised rock-opera vocal dramatics, and with lyrical content distanced about as far from the innocent 1950s as possible. Sample? "Please, Sir, let me return/if only for a term (How I yearn)/It's glee, Sir, with your hot breath upon me."

Wild Beasts' most ornately bedazzled double-platform arrives near the end of the disc; "She Purred, While I Grred" slaps itself silly with stop-on-a-dime switches from cowbell-clanging falsetto preens to nasty growling grinding rhythms. Meanwhile, Thorpe's libido is given a serious vocal let-go: "My fruit was ripe, she bit/My fruit was ripe, she bit/Huffing and puffing on the mattress stuffing/Upon the bunk a fervent funk." There's a Dr. Seuss aspect to the words on the page, but Thorpe yelps, coos, and roars considerable meaning into the rhymes.

Just in case you're looking for another tongue-twister, however: "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants" peppers each and every syllable of the lip-tripping titular phrase with woodblock-clopping nerd-boy funk, ringing guitar textures, and one of the most rapturously unbridled falsetto tendrils since Tiny Tim. Thorpe - as expected - packs several literature degrees' worth of wordplay within the song's sweat-stained gallop, but ah the chorus! I may have to break my personal no-hyperbole edict, after all.

Here's the video for say-it-three-times-fast "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants." Check out Thorpe's serious rocking of the Midge Ure moustache: