Wild Beasts
(Domino)
Hayden Thorpe's falsetto flutters like a hummingbird, swoops and curls like a multi-colored kite in the wind. He is, if anything, more flamboyant and florid than ever on this, the Wild Beasts' third album, yet because he is working against a more meticulously plotted background, his vocal pyrotechnics seem less shocking, more fitting this time. Smother continues in the Mercury Nominated Two Dancers (2009) path of more disciplined theatricality, finding a way for Thorpe's wild fantasias to work as artistry rather than oddity.
Smother is the Wild Beasts' most restrained, refined effort yet, paring down hot-house atmospheres to lush essentials. "Lion's Share," the opener, frames Thorpe's Jeff Buckley-ish acrobatics with a subtle rhythm of synthesizer, a scattering of piano notes. There's a basic discipline here, an acknowledgement that more could easily be too much, that pulls this song tight with tension. "Deeper," one of the album's best songs, brings out the soul influence in this artful outfit, allowing suave and stylish vocals to flourish over the undulation of drums, the subtle colorations of guitar and synthesizer. If Sade had a brother - and a slight penchant for the baroque - it might sound like this. Even "Albatross," with its whispery glissandos and sudden falsetto flights, is grounded in a crisp, unemotional drum beat and the chilly glamour of electric piano.
The most striking vocals, however, come at the coda of closer "End Comes to Soon," where the pixellated shimmer of guitars and keyboards clears and the complicated string of lyrics comes to a halt. Thorpe's wordless vocalizations ("E-o-o...e-o-o") cascade over a drifting cloud of piano and guitar, unfathomably gorgeous, like a jungle bird caught in a wire cage, but singing beautifully all the same.
DOWNLOAD: "Lion's Share" "Deeper" "End Comes Too Soon" JENNIFER KELLY
