Wild Beasts: Interview

Wild Beasts slowly creeped onto the music radar with their 2008 debut 'Limbo, Panto'. A year later the Kendal bunch received a Mercury nod with their acclaimed follow-up 'Two Dancers'.

Now after a whirl wind few years Wild Beasts return with their third offering 'Smother' this month. Before it all kicked off again, Gigwise caught up with the band to the album and their new lives in the South.

It has been a crazy few years for you all?

Tom: ''It was crazy busy for us. We were on tour from basically January to September visiting all of the UK, Europe and the US. Then in September it died down and we started work on the new album for about five or six weeks. We recorded and mixed in a pretty short amount of time, the record was done by early January.''

Ben: ''We never have a plan about how we want to make a record, we kind of consider ourselves as working musicians first and foremost. So it’s never really about taking a break as such between each record it’s about keeping going. I think it’s important to keep producing stuff; if you’re a good artist it should be about what you can produce all the time not what you can produce when you get down to it. It’s important to keep going.''

How did you find the reception to ‘Two Dancers’?

Ben: ''It was amazing. To get to travel with a record so much was a first for us and people seemed to really love what we were doing. We were in a bad position financially after the first album so for us it was make or break with ‘Two Dancers’.''

''Nobody really bought the first record and it cost a lot of money to make and we thought we may not get the chance to make another album so lets put all our efforts into this one.''

Tom: ''We all really pulled together on ‘Two Dancers’ and I think people could hear that. The album had a real energy about it as we were kind of in a desperate situation. We never expected any of the success that we got. The thing with that record was it was slow burning, and combined with all the Mercury stuff.''

Talking about the Mercury nomination, did you find the critical reception important?

Tom: ''To be honest it’s never really been about that. It didn’t change for us over night, it’s been very slow going and all the press attention has trickled in really slow to where we are now.''

Ben: ''We were never really hyped in that way so it was the natural process of people discovering what we were doing. The Mercury award was a real surprise for us and the fan support we’ve got now is astonishing really. These sort of things have their own way, you don’t necessarily need a writer or critic to tell somebody if something is good they seemed to find it out by themselves.''



You said you started work on the new album last year, did you have any set ideas of how you wanted it to sound?

Tom: ''We sat down and had a coffee on the first day about what we wanted to do. I think we said that we wanted to something genuine and beautiful. It kind of encompasses a lot of very very ugly stuff. That was the only real guidance we had before we started; naturally we wanted to use slower tempos and more synthetic sounds. We wanted to make it a lot more intimate; the vocals are much quieter, the drums and guitars are played lighter.''

Ben: ''The things on this album that are the most important are the small elements that you don’t necessarily appreciate until you there taken away. That’s the best thing about music is that it can change your emotions so quickly.''

Did your recording process change on 'Smother'?

Tom: ''Not really no, we worked with the same people on this album. We had demos which we'd recorded last June/July and a lot of that stuff got kept and put on the record. We wrote the album in East London and then we all packed up and went to Wales to record it. It was a really weird and wonderful place to be. The weather was very bleak while we were there and it was very heavy rain and hail. It was nice to get away and have our own kind of camp, where you kind of can't leave until you're done.''

Ben: ''The label never put pressure on us to have the record finished by a certain date so it was nice to have that kind of freedom and do our own thing. We kind of found our own way on this album; it's your own thing and your feel like you have better ownership over it.''

This is your third album now, do you feel like each album is a different learning curve?

Tom: ''Totally. You only ever really learn something by doing it and really learning the theory of how to make an album. I development is a continuous thing, each album is just a certain point on the time line. We're constantly moving as a band and I’m sure in a couple of months we'll move again;each album is kind of a postcard from that period.''

Ben: ''With each album there is always going to be a learning curve.''

Tom: ''The way we write an album hasn't changed. It's definitely a four way thing, somebody may start with an idea but then we'll all move on together. We're kind of trying to destroy that songwriter aspect that you can sometimes get in bands.''

What inspirations did you all use for this album?

Ben: ''For us it was important to capture a certain atmosphere when we write and kind of have everything ready to go for when we record. So we kind of left it to chance and adding lyrics to songs when we were in the studio. The first fragments of an idea to us are always the most important.''

Your Northern lads at heart how have you sound the move to the South?

Tom: ''We were based in Leeds for five years and slowly we've now all moved down to London. The North is lovely but Kendal compared to Manchester doesn't have the same atmosphere. We hit a bit of a glass window whilst we were in the North, we spent so much time travelling down to London we thought we might as well be in London anyway. It made absolutely no sense for us not to be here.''

''There are some big throw backs about living in London but there is also so much to do.''

Looking forward to the rest of the year?

Ben: ''We can't wait. Starting really from when the album is released it will be non stop touring and festival slots which is always amazing and something that we're always grateful for. We're also going to America and Australia this time too. With touring it can have its draw backs but most of the time it's always more good than bad. Also you realise that your music has travelled further than you have which is weird.''

Tom: ''We haven't done any live shows as yet with the new album so it will be good to get it out there and see what our fans think. The reaction to the album so far has been very good but it's kind of only been from a professional prospective. We're all very proud of this record; we just hope people really take to it.''