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Wild Beasts’ excellent new single ‘All the King’s Men’ presents a lady-crazy Tom Fleming singing about girls from towns as far-flung as Roedean, Shipley, Hounslow and Whitby. In so far as the track's impending release coincided with the tour, girl-from-Shipley Laura Groves was a fitting choice of support. Between the Beasts’ Two Dancers and Groves’ Blue Roses, Friday’s show exhibited material from two of the north of England’s finest recent albums.
Groves, now trading under the name Blue Roses, was backed live by multi-instrumentalists Sadie Anderson and Josh Taylor. From the eerie kalimba accompaniment of ‘Doubtful Comforts’ to the tense violin in closer ‘I Wish I…’, their additions of timbres aplenty brought out the distinct characters of Groves’ songs. Now a more varied performer than the singer of pure folk hinted at by her early shows, Groves’ soprano is now complemented by similarly clean backing vocals.
In the space between sets, the smoke machine and lighting were tested in so artful a way as to change the atmosphere entirely, filling the room with a sense of occasion rarely afforded to a potentially dingy venue under a railway bridge. It was with confidence that Wild Beasts arrived on stage to play a homecoming show of sorts (having originated in a Kendal school, they are now based in Leeds).
On record, the alternation of Hayden Thorpe’s Antony-esque falsetto with Fleming’s tenor provides Wild Beasts’ most strikingly otherworldly features, but the Beasts’ live show brought other idiosyncrasies to the fore. Whilst the vocals were flawless, the drums were exotic and infectious, Chris Talbot’s polyrhythms energising the crowd from hypnotic opener ‘The Fun Powder Plot’ through to the danceable ‘This is Our Lot’ and debut single ‘Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants’.
On those songs where the drive of the drums subsided, the set didn’t lose any momentum, as the stage was dominated by reverberating synths, ambient guitars and typically oddball lyrics on the likes of ‘Two Dancers (i)’ and ‘Hooting and Howling’. Equal parts chilled out and electrifying, Wild Beasts’ performance was of the kind that might be expected from a much more experienced band, yet before the set was even an hour old, the final song was played and the crowd left wanting more.
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