Best of 2014 The DIY List 2014: Wild Beasts talk dog t-shirts and playing The O2

Wild Beasts feature at #14 in The DIY List 2014, a look back at the year’s best albums, one-off shows, festival performances and achievements outside of the norm.

Wild Beasts have never been ordinary. They sprung up on the scene with a falsetto-baritone interchange that initially came across like Michael Buble tripping on helium balloons. Their extravagant, no-fucks-given pop didn’t fit neatly into any one scene, and since then the band’s idiosyncrasies have only been stretched further. To this day, nobody really sounds a jot like them, even if latest LP ‘Present Tense’ represents the closest they’ve come to penning actual pop bangers.

With that record - rated five stars by DIY, standing out as their finest several months on - the four-piece have achieved some wonderful and weird things. Frontman Hayden Thorpe appeared as a bobblehead during Arcade Fire’s Hyde Park show, right after his group supported the headliners. Big shows didn’t stop there - they were personally invited by The National to join for their biggest ever show at London’s O2 Arena. And as well as curating their own ‘Soft Future’ show at Leeds’ Canal Mills and penning two songs for an elaborate “gif novel” that confuses any tech-immune soul, they’ve gone one step further.

Just this last week, Wild Beasts unveiled 2014’s great merch gift - the official WB dog t-shirt. Magnificent, resplendent and a neat fit, it provides the ultimate answer to the eternal question, just how do you follow up your best album yet?

Below, Hayden Thorpe explains the thinking behind the dog tee, as well as going through the motions of Wild Beasts’ suitably strange 2014.