The Erotic Downbeat of Wild Beasts

The elegant, languorous video for Wild Beasts’ “Albatross,” the first single from the band’s upcoming album, Smother, is filled with images that are like Wild Beasts’ music: surreal, delicate, physical, painful, and, at times, painfully lovely.

With its gentle dance rhythms, memorable melodies, and heavy, overcast skies, Wild Beasts’ 2009 album, Two Dancers, which was nominated for 2010’s prestigious Mercury Prize, continues to find a place near the front of my vinyl stacks. The girls like it, too.

Smother promises to fall even closer to my heart. From the press release:

As Two Dancers refined elements of Limbo, Panto [the band’s debut] and veered off into uncharted territory, so Smother explores the erotic downbeat first hinted at on “Underbelly” and “When We’re Sleepy” from Two Dancers. For the first time on a Wild Beasts album, there are ten love songs. Often delicate, never wimpish.

Often delicate, never wimpish, and bringing only love—just like me. Wild Beasts’ Smother will be released on May 10 by Domino. It will be mine.

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