Wild Beasts typify the exciting music that has been
coming out of Leeds the past few years, evocative, honest and occasionally
catching you off guard with the bands vocals shared by Hayden Thorpe with his
emotive falsetto and Tom Fleming’s deeper croon. Now located in the capital and
touring the globe they haven’t forgotten their first gig in Leeds “terrible,
just awful” or the friends and fans they have made there. Ahead of the
bands set at Beacons Festival we talk to Tom find out about the evolution of their
albums and misconceptions about the band.
You toured
for two straight years, did you ever feel disconnected from things?
Not necessarily, it’s very easy to go into ‘poor me I
have to tour the world’ you know what me? I think it’s more like anything,
imagine if you were away from home a lot of the time and trying to have a
normal life as well, it’s a tug of war. It’s not that it’s not worth doing,
it’s just that it changes the dynamic of course. You can’t come home to your
girlfriend every night, it’s just not possible. I think it’s necessary for
musicians to put their stuff on the road and also think it’s up to them to try
and keep your feet on the ground, remember why your doing it in the first place
and not get caught up in the distractions.
When
Katie Harkin from Sky Larkin has joined for your live set, did it change the
dynamics having a female on board?
Effectively she is helping us out on stage, I think
Katie is too good a writer and musician and singer to actually stay with us
forever. She has been wonderful, we have known her from way back and she has
fit into the machine beautifully, she has been great to tour with.
Do you
think there are any misconceptions about the band?
I am sure there are. I think for the most part people
know what we are doing now. We have been accused of being over serious or being
pretentious, we have also been accused of being to silly, I don’t know. Put it
this way, it used to bother me and it really doesn’t anymore. I think to an
extent we have a body of work now and hopefully it has it’s own kind of logic,
we can kind of trace that back.
How
do you feel about the evolution of your albums?
I think all three of them were made under very
different circumstances and each one informed the other. I can trace back what
happened between the three. The first was very much a guitar album made in a
proper studio as such with a producer and from those techniques we learnt to
play much better, much tighter as a band. For the next record we learnt a lot
about how the studio works and how to do stuff electronically and texturally. I
always think good writers write about the same thing really, it’s just
refracted from different angles, well all my favorites anyway. I think that
kind of progression is natural. I think it’s imperative not to repeat yourself
but also imperative to keep what’s important about your music. We have been
making records for five years, you’ve got to make sure you’re keeping going.
The world moves really fast and you are part of the world, music is meant to be
a response to your life so it’s no good repeating what you did five years ago.
With each
album you make does it get easier or harder?
Predictably I’m going to tell you that some get
easier and some get harder. I think we are better writers and better players
now. The more we continue the more I feel we need to be drawing on our
experiences, it’s not enough to toss it off your shoulder you have to do
something with what you have learnt, go forward, try and be ahead of the curve.
You
joined the band in 2005, how was it joining a band with already established
friendships?
I knew the guys anyway but there was defiantly
a learning curve. I don’t think I noticed what a close little world a band is
until somebody else points it out. It was unremarkably easy, it was just one of
those things that fit.
Do
you think it’s vital that bands move to London to be successful?
I don’t think its imperative. I think
personally I got sick of being on the M1 all the time. It would be very wrong
of me to sit there and say this is the way you should do it, there are a
million ways to do it. This works for us because there are four of us and we
are kind of at the sharp end of the industry these days, there is a lot of
record company people and radio people that we deal with. I know people
operating all over the country, I think we have done it in a very traditional
way but I think there is a million ways to do it today. I think if we had begun
down here we wouldn’t have got nearly as far as we have. I think with Leeds being
quite a small city and with everyone being supportive rather than how sharky it
can be down here, it was a real benefit for us.
What do you
think of the music scene in Leeds?
Places to play, I mean the Brudenell Social Club is
still head and shoulders above most places in the country. I’m afraid I’m so
focused on what I am doing I tend to be pretty uncool. I’m listening to more
hip-hop these days so I’m a little behind the curb.
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