Brightest Young Things

Wild Beasts, still underrated and underappreciated, played to a small but enthusiastic crowd at the 930 Club on Saturday night. After three critically acclaimed albums, of which Two Dancers was nominated for a Mercury Prize, they still seem on the brink of obscurity in America. Anyone vigilant on indie blogs should be familiar with a few of their tracks. But to send them over the top, perhaps they should sell a track to a Volkswagen commercial or have someone do a mashup of Lil Wayne, Skrillex, LCD Soundsystem, and Wild Beasts to rocket up the Hype Machine charts. In the meantime they'll have to remain one of our best kept secrets.

Brooklyn's Milagres opened the night, with an offering of midtempo, reverb laden songs that were occasionally danceable, and at other times contemplative. Choppy synth lines peppered the the toe tapping tunes while the rhythm guitarist subbed out his strings for an electronic drum pad to supplement the bouncy rhythms.

The songs that had musing qualities were driven by drum beats that fell slow as syrup as the drummer thudded his floor tom with a Timpani mallet and followed it up with pronounced hammerstrikes on the snare. The lead singer was mic'd heavy on echo, with backup harmonies equally as doused in reverb, which at times evoked the pastoralia vogue of Seattle darlings Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses. Their confidence seemed to build as their set wore on, or perhaps the songs were just better in the second half. Choruses emerged with with more hooks, the band slinked and thrust their bodies with more spirit, and the crowd responded with increased enthusiasm. Though their musical inspirations were at times transparent, Milagres' sound was engaging, and it might be interesting to revisit them after a few more years of maturity beyond their debut album.

Before they exited the stage, they asked the crowd if they were excited for Wild Beasts, to which they followed up with, "You should be." As a relatively new fan of the band, I was interested to see how well the singers sounded live.

Both vocalists invite comfortable comparisons to their British compatriots. Hayden Thorpe's theatrical falsetto matches the melismatic melodrama of Mika and Dan Hawkins (The Darkness), while Tom Flemming's velvet baritone is more like the midpoint between Morrissey and Ian Curtis. Isolating the two voices makes the idea of a pairing seem as quizzical as chocolate and cheese. Maybe it's the sexual, sado-masochist lyrics that aligns them so well, or the brooding post-punk tapestry that catalyzes their collaboration. How ever it succeeds, just be glad it does. Too often bands suffer from a lack of provocative singing. Wild Beasts are blessed with a double dose of memorable timbres.

Much like Milagres, Wild Beasts were content to start out with their slow building numbers ("Plaything" and "Loop the Loop") and escalate their set slowly. The audience, desperate to engage with the beloved Brits, could only stagger in awkward zombie lurches to the plodding rhythms. Before the tempo shifted up, the Beasts blasted deep bass tones from a sampler/MPC. At times it overpowered the rest of their sound, and threw me out of the moment when I realized my phone wasn't on vibrate, it was just lower decibel ranges rumbling everything in my pants. EVERYTHING.

The bass was reigned in as their energy went up. As if on cue, two guys from the audience broke into the middle of the crowd for a one on one dance party during the upbeat shift. Usually something that annoys concert goers, the interjecters were more like a shot of adrenaline that compelled everyone else to dance too.

Thorpe and Flemming and the rest of the group swooned under the green, blue, and violet lights and everyone was finally drunk with peak pleasure. As for the quality of their singing, it was as if I was listening to the albums. There was no loss in the tone of their voices and it seemed as though they occasionally shifted roles. Thorpe often sounded restrained, while on the effusive track "All The King's Men," Flemming crowed and yawped like a wildman.

All at once they sounded enigmatic, whimsical, trippy, and eccentric. In between songs they weren't much for banter, offering "you say cay-po, I say kah-po" with his guitar's neck clip. They did, somewhat surprising given the small size of the crowd, admit that their DC show was the best yet on the tour. I can't say it's the best show I've seen this year, but it was enough to make want to see them again next time they come back to DC.