Seemingly coming from nowhere, Manchester’s Deaf Institute is becoming the venue de jour for the city, offering a mini-music hall that is just about on the right side of kitsch. It’s an intimate, warm and friendly venue, and tonight it’s packed to the hilt with an enthusiastic crowd and a thousand beards. It’s something of an art-rock haven and probably just the right place to see the likes of the marginally demented Wild Beasts, who were headlining the long-running and rather popular Up The Racket night.
RACE HORSES open the evening with a string of effervescent but spineless shimmery indie-doo-wop songs. If we were in the business of generating tabloid headlines for bands, theirs would be ‘Camp-ire Weekend.’ Contemplating a cigarette on the roof terrace before they finish was a mistake, as just before heading into their final song, the band grow some balls and create an aggressive, chaotic finale that pisses over everything that went before it. Taking the end as the blueprint, Race Horses could really be onto something – otherwise they might just have to settle for great success as an indie pop band appealing to the masses. It’s their call.
Creating your own loops on stage is hardly a new thing, but there is always something initially impressive about a musician and a bunch of gadgets on stage. Dressed not unlike a leprechaun, NAPOLEON IIIrd makes a great initial impression with his brand of electro-classic rock, filling in for a whole band with a series of self-generated noises and riffs. It’s a strange fusion, but works in a strange way. Vocally, he flits from gravelly Springsteen-style to a more Michael Jackson baiting level of soprano, all adding to the strange mish-mash that is this performance.
Then, at some point after the fourth song, you realise that this is just someone showing off their gadgets and it begins to feel very self-indulgent. There is limited appeal in watching someone make a loop live on stage, as the effect is not that different to just having a backing track. The ‘look what I can do’ approach loses the audiences interest, especially as the set dips into a couple of slow and essentially dull tracks, when the sound of crowd chatter almost matches that being made onstage. Boys and their toys, really.
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WILD BEASTS have the potential to be huge this year. Their sound falls in neatly with the current trend for indie disco bands like MGMT and Empire of the Sun; but they’re much better than that, moving away from the Scissor Sisters side of things and embracing what you can do with a damn good beat. Having only heard recent single ‘Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants,’ I was expecting the band to look a little more weird and wonderful, but the lack of pretence about them was refreshing. Whilst their music is often theatrical, as a group Wild Beasts are relatively shy and less jubilant than you might expect.
The general idea seems to be funky art-pop, led in many ways by the percussion, with immaculate and inspiring drumming throughout. It’s an energetic set, filled with well received songs that surely would have led to more dancing had the space been available. They sound like a really fun version of Muse mixed in with New Order’s dance-floor allure.
The vocal duties are split between guitarist Haydn (who takes on the shrill side of things) and bassist Tom, who adds a sombre with a smile element to the songs with his Ian Curtis-esque low bits. The flitting between singers and instruments keeps things interesting, and it’s only towards the end of the set that things fade out a little. Wild Beasts excel at making you want to dance, and when they drop the pace, it feels like a comedown in comparison. But on the whole, it’s an energetic set from a vibrant band with the potential to make it. Of the current scene, Wild Beasts should be the ones to walk away with their integrity in tact.
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