Wild Beasts at Motion, Bristol

Author Tobi Stidolph Published October 21, 2016 Comments 0

Wild Beasts are an indie rock four-piece from Kendal in Cumbria. The group have now released five acclaimed studio albums, most recently the album ‘Boy King’, which was released in August on Domino Records (more on this on the next paragraph). The group’s second album ‘Two Dancers’, released in 2009, was nominated for the Mercury Prize, a music award that has been previously won by Arctic Monkeys, The XX, Alt-J and Skepta alike. The band was formed in 2002 by school friends Hayden Thorpe and Ben Little. The duo began writing songs under the name ‘Fauve’, the French term for ‘wild beast’. At the beginning of 2004 members Chris Talbot and Tom Fleming joined the band as drummer and bassist and the foursome became Wild Beasts.

On August 5th 2016 Wild Beasts released their fifth studio album dubbed ‘Boy King’. Boy King is the band’s most successful album to date peaking at Number 9 on the UK Album Chart. Wild Beasts’ new album was recorded earlier this year in Dallas, Texas with the help of top producer John Congleton who is known for his work, producing for a number of big artists including Bono, Blondie, Franz Ferdinand, Earl Sweatshirt and Unknown Mortal Orchestra among others. Boy King is a concept album dealing with “the self-destructive effects of modern-day masculinity”.

After seeing Wild Beasts at Glastonbury and Bestival back in 2014, we were keen on seeing the band perform their latest material. We headed to Bristol’s super-club Motion to catch the first date of the band’s 2016 European tour. Wild Beasts played a magical set, executing a sixteen song performance. The band began with one of their new singles, ‘Big Cat’, and then selecting numerous tracks from all of their albums, whilst conveniently placing seven tracks from the latest album in amongst other songs in the set. Wild Beasts showed off their musical talents, with a well rehearsed, solid performance. The three-song encore included two new songs ‘Get My Bang’ and ‘Celestial Creatures’, followed by fan’s favourite ‘All The Kings Men’.