Round-up Tracks: Wild Beasts, The Strokes and more

Wild Beasts have always wrestled with a masculinity crisis and shifting identity, every move sprinkled with sleaze. But their previous two records - career highlight ‘Present Tense’ and the sleepy-eyed ‘Smother’ - never hinted at a song like ‘Get My Bang’ being in their locker.

If anything, the first take from ‘Boy King’ has more in common with the theatrical growls of 2008 debut ‘Limbo, Panto’. On that record, Hayden Thorpe led with a Draconian fever, lusty cries packing a razor-sharp edge. The same mentality can be found here, but it’s been reinterpreted into an uptight, vicious synth track. A stop-start lead melody sounds like it’s a hound jumping hurdles, and Thorpe’s in peak seedy form. “No getting it wrong, no getting it wrong / Just getting it on,” he barks between breathy growls. Never have Wild Beasts sounded this love-ravaged and swerved by their own instincts.

There’s even room for a showy, intentionally disjointed guitar solo. And just when Wild Beasts looked to have covered all bases across a diamond-encrusted career, they’ve hit a new high. Staggeringly, they’ve found another way to reinvent the wheel. Just watch out for Hayden. He seems to have grown actual fangs. (Jamie Milton)

Surprise releases might be reaching saturation point, but not much could incite mania quite like The Strokes’ return did this week. With wide-eyed madness gripping the globe, ‘OBLIVIUS’ saunters into frame like few could’ve expected. Scratching its elbows, looking for the door and clearly uncomfortable in its own skin, it’s a shivering opening that marks their arrival - a far cry from the cocksure persona the New York giants exhude. It doesn’t take long for them to snap out of it though, that festival-baiting chorus exploding into life like a spring blossom in time-lapse. It’s all things to all Strokes fans - the awkward, twisting work of their latest guises, shacking up with their anthemic beginnings. The Strokes might’ve stumbled a bit of late, but ‘OBLIVIUS’ - and ‘Future Present Past’ as a whole - finds them hitting bullseye once more without even looking at the dartboard. (Tom Connick)

When we asked Jamie Hince about The Kills’ song ‘Siberian Nights’ – the first song the band penned for their fifth record ‘Ash & Ice’ – he told us it was a concept song about Vladimir Putin’s latent homoerotic desires. “He just wants the warmth of a masculine body,” he deadpanned, suggesting that Putin’s object of infatuation is Tony Blair. He’s probably got a point there, in fairness.

While ol’ Jamie was probably taking the mick a bit, ‘Siberian Nights’ remains a track that searches for an especially lusty something in the most unlikely, brutal environments. “I can whip you up like cream,” it boasts over stalking horror movie guitar-cries, “I could drink your seven seas, is that too close for comfort?” Angular, chilly, and as sparse as the remote landscape that gives the song its name, everything here is close to the bone and spiny. Packed with desire, and above all, a longing to get back to something that connects, it surges with all the opposites-collide energy that is shaping up to define ‘Ash & Ice’. (El Hunt)

‘What’s It Gonna Be?’ starts out life with a peppy little melody line that sounds a bit like it belongs on The Sims. It’s fitting beginning to a track that decisively picks out the pop banger career path, types in the ‘motherlode’ code, and jets off straight off to a living room rammed with domesticated dinosaurs, skateboards, and well-travelled, sci-fi loving koalas.

Racing forward with beats crispier than Gary Lineker on a mad one at a Janet Jackson gig, ‘What’s It Gonna Be?’ is packed to the nines with the all-out gutsy punchiness of ‘Indecision,’ and the same to-the-point simplicity of ‘Touch’. It doesn’t just get to the point sonically, either. Shura’s vocals are pushed right forward and bold in the mix, for one, and she doesn’t mess about with mushy poetry for a second, either. “I don’t wanna give you up, I don’t want to let you love somebody else but me,” goes that breakneck chorus, and both no-frills and plain-talking, it’s sort of victorious and powerless at the same time. Properly decent pop music is transformative, turning heartbreak into something joyful and indulgent to be roared about at the top of your lungs. If you’ve been unceremoniously dumped lately, this one should do the trick.

Shura’s at her best when she gets out of the misty soup bowl, and throws herself into a shameless embrace of cheese, and with her latest, previous experiments in drifting humidity have been well and truly tossed to one side. Instead, this song should come equipped with a whack-you-across-the-chops-welly-factor warning. It’s bloomin’ good fun, basically. (El Hunt)

Whitney’s debut album, ‘Light Upon the Lake’, is a collection of seemingly easygoing songs caught up in a near-invisible web of torment. Julian Ehrlich’s light falsetto is deceptive. More often than not, he’s singing about loss, loneliness and everything in between.

With ‘No Matter Where We Go’, there’s a break in routine. This time, Whitney become doe-eyed romantics without a second glance. “Hey mama, don’t slow down,” they chant, racing from Max Kakacek’s spider’s web guitar parts into a shiny chorus about driving “with the windows down.” It’s one of the few times Whitney paint love as something other than complex and profound. Like a first crush, there’s a sense that anything’s possible; that simple perfect, times lie ahead. (Jamie Milton)

Wobbling about like your nan after one too many piña coladas at the pool-side bar, Weaves’ latest comes off like an end of the world party on a tropical island.

It’s fitting really, given the subject matter. “I’ve always been attracted to a bit of a wild man, a nomad or lost soul of sorts,” explains Weaves singer Jasmyn Burke, ” and after a fight one night I just went to the studio and this sentiment started spewing out. I think when you’re in the thick of a tumultuous relationship sometimes you think you’re the one for them but then the next moment you don’t know what’s going wrong or how you’re really feeling.”

That post-break-up sense of equal parts listlessness and liberation defines ‘Coo Coo’. Soaring, screeching guitar lines get dragged down to earth with a clatter of percussion; syrupy melodies are torn apart by screeches of feedback and noise. It all amounts to a breathless ride - “you’re so coo-coo, you’re so crazy” Jasmyn hammers home again and again. By the end of it all, spewed out and dizzy beyond belief, you’ve no choice but to agree. (Tom Connick)

‘Diseasey’ is an amazing word. Everyone should use it, especially when it’s being linked to the complex but astute delivery of London trio Sälen.

A big problem with the current alt-pop world is a refusal to go beyond smart beats and nice, light synths. But Sälen vocalist Ellie Kamio has an amazingly frank way with words. “What’s coming over me? Why am I in bed with you?” she sings, referring to another guy’s girl as a “bint”. There’s nothing holding her back, forthright opinions being her forté.

This gross, ‘Diseasey’ subject has a hold on Kamio. “I’m into your sickness / Infect with me with your weakness,” she admits, wrestling with the idea of falling for someone so obviously icky. But while she’s entangled in a web of doubt, she’s leading Sälen through refreshingly honest pop, music that goes beyond a box ticking aesthetic. Prepare to get infected. (Jamie Milton)

Tags: The Strokes, Wild Beasts, Listen, Features