Music Review: Wild Beasts, Present Tense

By Less Lee Moore

Present Tense, the latest album from Wild Beasts, is like the feeling of holding your breath and fighting back tears while watching an emotionally distressing movie in a quiet theater. You want to give in to your emotions, but the strain has a profoundly exquisite painfulness. Present Tense is darker and more somber than the band’s previous two albums and features far less florid prose. This doesn’t mean the lyrics are any less insightful; it simply means listeners must work harder to decipher them and reveal the beauty within. There’s nothing that’s not beautiful about Present Tense, even when it paints unpleasant portraits.

Opening with the scathing class critique “Wanderlust,” Wild Beasts brings The Smiths’ “Hand In Glove” into the new millennium, accompanied by the spirit of Pulp’s “Common People” and “Joyriders”: Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a fuck/Funny how that little pound buys a lot of luck. The synths swerve from ghostly to sinuous and back again, buttressed by syncopated drums.

It seems unfair not to mention the ravishing voices of Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming, though they were, no doubt, the first things that impressed listeners when Wild Beasts debuted back in 2008. On Present Tense, the two singers are no less impressive, swapping vocals from song to song and sometimes from line to line. The album is synth-heavy, but still features the band’s always-impressive percussion, giving it an uneasy sensation.

Present Tense is no less concerned with sexuality than Wild Beasts’ previous work, but those concerns are more insidiously executed than usual. The threatening, lusty “Nature Boy” seems to indicate that certain things cannot be controlled for long, while the sensuous “Mecca” sounds like water spilling down the leaves of plants, as plucked guitar strings provide contrast to the song’s fluidity.

“Sweet Spot” is the most immediately catchy tune on the album, which is perhaps unexpected for a song so bittersweet, both musically and lyrically. The combination of the passionate lyrics and bleak music create a sense of happiness being overwhelmed by tears. Thorpe and Fleming share vocals and the repeated “oooh” in the chorus is like a balm to the wounds the song exposes as it perfectly elucidates its title. Fleming sings lead on the ominous “Daughters,” inhabiting the voice of a narrator filled with a dread of female power and sexuality. “Pregnant Pause” is another song with earnest lyrics and a melancholy sound, a peek inside the world of two lovers isolated from others through their feelings for each other.

The contrast between the joyful, sweetly loving “A Simple Beautiful Truth” and the crushing expose of “A Dog’s Life” is overwhelming. On its face, the latter is a condemnation of the way pets are treated, but perhaps it also alludes to women and children. Its last verse is devastating and I dare anyone who hears it to remain unmoved. The quasi-title track “Past Perfect” has more of that wordplay we’ve come to expect from Wild Beasts, but it’s restrained, which makes Thorpe’s towering vocal that much more striking. “New Life” is about motherhood of a different sort, from the perspective of one who crawled from the proverbial primordial swamp, and the music is appropriately eerie.

Although Present Tense glides between incredibly sad and somewhat less so, it ends on a positive note, with the uplifting “Palace” and an arresting couplet: You remind me of the person I wanted to be/Before I forgot. Like fighting to stay afloat in a deep, murky lake, Present Tense requires your constant attention, but it’s so gripping you’ll surrender after just a few listens.

Present Tense was released by Domino Records on February 25.

Tour Dates:
03-04 Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall Of Williamsburg
03-06 Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
03-08 Mexico City, MX – El Plaza Condesa
03-26 Manchester, UK – Albert Hall
03-27 Glasgow, UK – Arches
03-29 Dublin, IE – Olympia
03-30 Bristol, UK – Academy 1
03-31 Cambridge, UK – Corn Exchange
04-01 London, UK – Brixton Academy
04-03 Amsterdam, NL – Melkweg
04-04 Rotterdam, NL – Motel Mozaique Festival
04-05 Cologne, DE – Gebaude
04-06 Berline, DE – Lido
04-07 Hamburg, DE – Knust
04-09 Munich, DE – Strom
04-10 Milan, IT – Elita Festival @ Teatro Franco Parenti
04-11 Lyon, FR – Marche-Gare
04-12 Zurich, CH – Plaza Club
04-13 Lille, FR – Aeronef
04-15 Brussels, BE – Orangerie