Wild Beasts

Where The Horrors’ set was built on powerful, strident rock, their Main Stage counterparts channel a sleepy sexuality of such perfect beauty that it silences even East London’s most rowdy festival audience. Indeed, at several points I want to share with fellow Dummies how impressed I am, but can’t quite figure out how to express it. Wild Beasts create a rare symbiosis of stunning tracks and bewildering live performance with such effortlessness and ease, you’re tempted to wonder why so few bands can do what they do, until you remember that no band has the vocal interplay that Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming have, no band can carve out such a rhythms as unique as those of Chris Talbot, and no band comes close to the sheer poetry that is their trademark. On a night like this, with a clear sky and a bright half-moon directly above, it’s difficult to understand Wild Beasts as anything less than purveyors of magic. It even feels disrespectful to only offer applause at the teary-eyed conclusions of Reach A Bit Further and Loop The Loop. In a set that succeeds in both grand, soaring pop – The Devil’s Crayon, All The King’s Men – and whispered introspection, it’s fair to say Wild Beasts have conjured something to truly cement their deserved position at the forefront of UK guitar music.