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The four boys of Wild Beasts aren’t concerned with being of the modern, or being of the renaissance, being baggy pantsed or being tight pantsed, being in a scene or being in a place. Wild Beasts’ music, being what it is, just is.
And with wishy-washy whim, it did begin (Autumn 2002 Kendal, Cumbria)
At sixteen years old, it was too late to become a footballer. Most sporting prodigies were snagged from their mothers arms aged five plus, never-mind the peccadilloes and panics of early adulthood. So via default of desire, Benny Little and Hayden Norman Thorpe sat down together, with two guitars and Hayden singing, to write pop songs by the name of Fauve (meaning Wild Beast).
Bingo! Another plucked from life’s limbo (New Year 2004 Kendal, Cumbria)
Now eighteen years old, Chris Talbot took up agency and signed on. Under the revised name of Wild Beasts, ‘Bert’ as he came to be known, blundered his way through synthesisers and drum machines to finally take pride of place where he felt most comfortable and was, ultimately, most invaluable, behind the drum kit.
Though dark and dank, in their castle they did skank (Summer 2004 Kendal, Cumbria)
The three boys, now having left school, did what was obvious to them, by spending eighteen months in a rented closet of a room. Bert, Benny and Hayden developed The Unit into a studio in which they could continue to develop their pop-songs.
A grudge, a nudge, the gentle persuasion and the personal invasion (Autumn 2005 Leeds, Yorkshire)
The boys dabbled, deliberated and finally descended upon Leeds, living in a house together, that rested upon a basement fit enough to transplant The Unit from Cumbria to Yorkshire. By chaser of chance, respected musician and friend of the band from home, twenty year old Tom Fleming, lived close by in Leeds and was immediately touted as a Wild Beast. Tommy gracefully bore both bass and baritone and much was born out of the jubilant momentum that followed.
Rituals, demands, sect like pop bands... (New Year/Spring 2006 Leeds, Yorkshire)
Slowly but surely Wild Beasts began to make inroads into the clean and the obscene within the Leeds music scene, making many live appearances at many different places. They undertook this petty pilgrimage to enrich the stuff that songs are made of. The boys cuddled close the conditions around them and made sacred from the profane.
So we bent our backs and leaned hard into our chores, like an old slugger working the ring, the furious fist of fate swung his swing and we took the lot - full on the sweet spot.
