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KW12 19.03. - 25.03.2018

Last Night All My Dreams Came True

Artist: 
Wild Beasts
Erschienen: 
15.02.2018
Label: 
Domino

When Wild Beasts announced, last September, that they would be calling it a day, the news came with an unusual absence of drama. There were no bust-ups or breakdowns to report, no warring words, not even a trace of the trademark “creative differences”. Instead there was a dignified and heartfelt message to their fans that explained that the band had run its course. “We’re caretakers to something precious and don’t want to have it diminish as we move forward in our lives,” they wrote. “Thank you for your love and energy and for helping us make it what it is.” For those who’d watched the Cumbrian group grow from purveyors of peculiar guitar pop into one of the most inventive and important bands of their generation, the news came as a shock. Weren’t they just hitting the peak of their powers? Perhaps that was the point. “I think there’s a life cycle with any band,” says Hayden Thorpe. “It reaches a point where the snake begins to eat its tail. Our last album, ‘Boy King’, felt just like our first record in many ways – in its fuck you spirit, in its unfashionableness, in its sense of self-destruction. It was as if we’d begun to redigest ourselves.”

The group were also facing up to a harsh reality of life in a band: after 15 years together, many of them spent on gruelling tour schedules, they were feeling the strain, both physically and mentally. Continuing at full pace was starting to seem impossible. Yet continuing at anything less than full pace felt even worse, an abandonment of the 24/7 work ethic and creative mania that had made this band so special in the first place. “There’s only one way we ever worked,” explains Hayden. “And that’s without compromise and full-bloodedly. It was full membership from being a teenager. So if you lose your ethos, what have you got left?” If this all sounds like an unusually graceful way for a band to bow out, then remember that Wild Beasts never made a habit of doing what was expected of them. Certainly, their music was not what was expected of four young men armed with guitars.

Back in the late noughties, in an indie scene awash with moronic lad-rock and stale retromania, Wild Beasts often felt like they were from another planet entirely – at turns sensitive, sensual and self-critical, they embraced genres as diverse as ambient electronica and libidinous R&B. Some were affronted by their sheer lack of boxability – who were these strange chaps with falsetto shrieks and lyrics that conjured up a strange literary laddishness (“So for forgiveness/With me boys as witness/Take this chips with cheese/As an offering of peace.”)? What on earth were we supposed to do with them? “In a lot of senses we were a lad band trying to aim for something we weren’t,” says Tom Fleming. “We were interested in that play between masculine and feminine.” Indeed, with their second album, ‘Two Dancers’, and the undulating textures of their third, ‘Smother’, Wild Beasts tapped into a sensuality that had not been sorely lacking in guitar music. It was, thinks Hayden, a reflection of the intimacy that existed within the band: “There was a true sense of familial closeness between us that allowed for softness and vulnerability. I sometimes feel like I’ve had three husbands, because there is literally no level of intimacy beyond sexual that hasn’t been broached!” But as a band that embraced duality – whether through their beguiling mix of swagger and vulnerability, or the interplay between Tom’s baritone and Hayden’s falsetto – they were never simply one thing. Hailing from a farming community and attendees at a tough northern comprehensive, they still had to adopt enough masculine swagger in order to “hold their skeletons up” each day. “If anything we were aggressively sensual,” says Hayden, on reflection. “Like, fuck you, I’m going to sing this so deftly and softly. When we started out playing the blues bars in Kendal we would come on after some dudes who’d been shredding with Budweiser bottles and screaming down the mic. People would be disgusted by us. And I’d be shaking because it was the most affronting act you could put on in a pub like that.” What’s perhaps most striking when looking back on Wild Beasts’ back catalogue is the sheer prescience of their music. The themes they tackled – toxic masculinity, gender fluidity, the conflicts surrounding class, politics and art that went into fourth album ‘Present Tense’ – were no bandwagon jumps, often becoming hot topics in the media several years after they’d been eloquently dealt with on record. This wasn’t, says, Tom, a conscious thing. “We weren’t trying to be on the button, but we were looking around us, noticing things, and trying to comment on them.” How perceptive they must have been, then – for to gaze back on their five marvellous albums is to gain a greater insight into the world we now live in. It’s for this and many other reasons that Wild Beasts have always been held with such affection by their fans. The outpouring of love that met their goodbye was - the band all agree – overwhelming. But it didn’t give them pause for second thoughts. Instead, it provided total affirmation that it was the right thing to do. “It showed that we still had ownership over something valuable, that it was uncompromised, and that we still meant this thing,” says Hayden. “It wasn’t as if we were announcing that we were putting a favourite pet down that had been on its last legs for a while. There’s no mercy killing about it. We are in our prime in a lot of ways.” And so it made sense that they should document this. That’s where the idea for ‘Last Night All My Dreams Came True’ came from, a set of ‘Boy King’ cuts and “match fit” old favourites recorded afresh at the legendary RAK studios in London. “The decision to break up made us a better band,” admits Hayden. “It released all the other plates we were spinning just to keeping going and freed up all this energy. It was like throwing one last bit of fuel onto the fire – fuck it, let’s just capture this.” “It’s us as tight and slick as we ever have been,” agrees Tom. “And it’s also us giving the fewest fucks we've ever given. There’s a sense of celebration and destructiveness combined, a sense that the fetters are off. Not that they were ever on ... but that sense of limited time before you shuffle off is very much a motivator.” Adding to the feeling that the band were completing a neat circuit - the snake gnawing once more at its tail – were the similarities between RAK and Gula, the wood-panelled Swedish studio where Wild Beasts recorded their debut album. Still, nobody’s going to pretend that recording a farewell to a band that started 15 years ago was easy.

“There's something really poignant about goodbyes if you can bear with the agony,” says Hayden. “And there were times when every one of us probably wanted to drop the mic and leave it for dead. It was tough that day, thinking ‘this is the last time we will sing that song together or record this track together’.” And make no mistake, this is the last time Wild Beasts will be doing such things. This is no hiatus and there are no crafty eyes on a future reunion – put simply, the band have too much respect for their own body of work to do that. Instead this goodbye will be - as Byron himself would surely approve – forever. And it will be marked with a definitive ending when they play their final shows in February 2018. Those performances will carry a degree of sadness, as all goodbyes should, but they won’t contain an ounce of regret. Instead you can be sure they’ll be energised, celebratory affairs, a chance for this strange and magical band to bow out for good and on their own terms. “We get to leave our desk by our own accord,” concludes Hayden, “and that makes us very lucky. Whoever gets to do that?” (Quelle: Domino Documents)

Tracklist: 
1Erster Song
2Zweiter Song
Tourdates: 
21.03.2018München
12.04.2018Ulm

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