Wild Beasts' name comes from the 20th century French art movement Les Fauves (also the inspiration for Les Savy Fav), so maybe the French term "belle laide"-- a woman who is attractive but not conventionally beautiful-- best describes singer Hayden Thorpe's voice. Thorpe's voice howls and thrashes, other times it actually sings or simpers or sighs, but only when he stretches it to the ceiling does it come into its own. His voice feels close in temperament to Antony Hegarty or Baby Dee's, but its mix of pointed sexuality and ambiguous gender points back to Boy George or David Bowie.
That indeterminate quality is the central theme of Limbo, Panto. Vocally, Thorpe plays with what idealized masculinity sounds like; lyrically, the band wants to know what masculinity feels like. "Men to be men, must love and pity," Thorpe announces on opener "Vigil For a Fuddy Duddy". By Limbo, Panto's end he's cursed Aristotle, gone for "casual sex with a hard up thug," and sworn on his "own cock and balls." If there's a central character across these tracks, it's vice itself. Limbo, Panto is essentially a morality play as cabaret show as rollicking indie rock record. The Sunset Rubdown-like full-bodied pomp of "The Club of Fathomless Love" also runs down a series of rhetorical questions: "I've sheened...have I not?/ I've Brylcreemed, have I not?/ I've length of loinly manliness, have I not?" That speech oddity would sound appropriate in a camp, old-timey staging of Hamlet.
The funny thing is that Wild Beasts pull it all off with grinning, chirping enjoyment. True, lots of the tracks on Limbo, Panto use minor chords to enhance the casual depravity of its characters, but nearly all the guitars chime and sparkle. And others, like "Woebegone Wanderers", take on melodramatic halts and cabaret flourishes that render its subject matter comical. "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants", originally recorded in 2006, still shows this. The band sound more aggressive on the re-recorded LP version: the beat more danceable, the title line shakier and more seductive. It's also Thorpe's most impressive vocal performance.
Underneath these filmy and seductive layers is not a band in limbo. This may be Wild Beasts' first album, but they've got a fully developed aesthetic, one that is thematically and vocally alien, but sonically, pop and conventional. Maybe a voice that bizarre needs something pretty to curl up on, but each song, whether a ballad or a romper (mostly the latter), generates enough turbulence to float with pockmarked elegance.
