Wild Beasts – Punk Drunk and Trembling

Where Boy King explored the toxic expectations of modern masculinity, Punk Drunk and Trembling runs almost like a case study; a romantic encounter in microcosm

Album Review by George Sully | 23 Oct 2017
Album title: Punk Drunk and Trembling
Artist: Wild Beasts
Label: Domino
Release date: 20 Oct

Good bands breaking up is sad. Sad that you might never get to see them live again – at least not after the inevitable farewell tour. It’s also sad because it means there’ll be no new music from them, but that’s only new music; we’ll still have their catalogue – stamped, saved and digitised – forever. They're called 'records' after all. And Kendal indie scholars Wild Beasts may not have had the longest of runs – 16 years is merely adolescent compared to some bands’ unending lifespans – but there’s an authenticity to their output that’ll be worthy of some reverence long after they part ways in 2018.

Punk Drunk and Trembling, their fifth and final EP, is three extra tracks taken from the recording sessions for recent fifth LP, Boy King. And just as the sleeve’s lit visage casts a new light on the LP’s dark neon figure, so too does Punk Drunk and Trembling offer additional perspective on the album. Where Boy King explored the toxic expectations of modern masculinity, Punk Drunk... runs almost like a case study; a romantic encounter in microcosm.

The title track presents the frailty and insecurity that macho bravado often obscures, with our hero “terrified” in the presence of someone they clearly like. Last Night All My Dreams Came True is its sexually-charged follow-up, the squelchy bass thumping with a wink ('Ooh, baby, come stay for a while / We’re agile together' coos frontman Hayden Thorpe), building on the brash electronics of Boy King. But it’s a fraught sexuality, one that’s fragile, tortured by the complexities of social politics.

And Wild Beasts know things don’t always play out like a rom-com; sex is complicated, humans moreso. The haunting, haunted Maze is a foggy and helpless closing track, our hero mourning a love that could have been ('No one wins at this game').

11 minutes in and it’s over. But as Tom Fleming purrs in his deep, truffle-oil baritone on the opening track, 'What’s done is done, what can be said / Why speak?' The Wild Beasts opus – a neat five albums and five EPs, countless live shows in ballrooms, music halls, cathedrals and festivals – may be a brief corona, but it’s the story of a band working through the pains and ecstasies of being human. That will shine bright for a good while yet.

Often sounding as much in awe of these feelings as they are in thrall to them, Thorpe et al have always played from the heart. Friends since they were teenagers, they possess a singularity of vision rarely seen in contemporary indie outfits. From their wild debut Limbo, Panto through to 2016’s pouting Boy King, Wild Beasts wrestled with life’s questions with a brave, collective focus. What’s done is done; what can be said?

http://wild-beasts.co.uk/