Wild Beasts @ Bowery Ballroom 2/26/2010

L-R Ben Little, and Hayden Thorpe of WILD BEASTS

If, this December, when you were tracking the annual lists of ‘best’ albums, you had the patience to scroll past the ubiquitous mentions of Merriweather Post Pavilion, you might have come across the bi-erotic image of two androgynous lovers. The disembodied lips on the cover of Wild Beasts’ Two Dancers, like the classic covers of Roxy Music, present a direct challenge to pop-music buyers: The sexual desires of the artist, and for that matter, the painful vulnerabilities that those desires expose, are ingrained in the music.

On Friday, Wild Beasts finally arrived in New York to support that album. On a bare stage, the band entered to a mash-up of Philip Glass and Sylvia Plath; referencing the contradictory nature of their staccato rhythm, and romantic voice. That’s the kind of cheeky, self-aware entrance you’d expect from an older Morrissey. But this was more like seeing The Smiths in their prime. The hush that frontman Hayden Thorpe commanded over a rowdy New York crowd represents the type of talent that would, in an era before American Idol, create a pop-superstar. Nuanced and expressive, his voice literally dominated the room. The other three members of Wild Beasts did more than hold their own. Based upon the crispness of each transition, it’s clear the band’s singular style was borne from unseen hours of rehearsal and revision.

One way of judging the staying power of new music is by examining the devotion of the artists’ fanbase. Are the kids there to be a part of something fashionable? Or, are they there to commune with a record they have listened to obsessively in private? Judging from Friday’s crowd, Wild Beasts packed a large portion of the latter. Many fans arrived alone, sang along, and left alone. One bookish college-girl at the center of the stage clasped her hands in devotion ten minutes before the band arrived, and didn’t break that clasp until long after the encore. She followed Mr. Thorpe’s movements with wide eyes, closing them tightly during emotional peaks in the music.

The same reason Two Dancers became too risky a choice for ‘album of the year’ is the very reason why it should gain popularity long after albums like Merriweather Post Pavilion fade into the archives: Simply put, Wild Beasts create music by and for outcasts. Where as Animal Collective made a clever record that speaks on behalf of an elite social scene, Wild Beasts made idiosyncratic art-pop that speaks to the loneliness of the individual listener. It’s not insane to mention Two Dancers in the same breath as classic U.K. albums with literary themes of longing, and sexual confusion such as The Sensual World, or The Queen is Dead.  Time will tell if it can ever achieve that level of staying power.   Friday night’s performance reconfirmed that Wild Beasts’ Two Dancers was one of the most energizing pop-albums of 2009. Seeing the aforementioned bookish girl mouthing along with co-vocalist Tom Fleming’s haunting line “the day you moved off/the whole village mourned/love’s no kind of joke,” signaled that a dramatic reappraisal of the album, pushed by a passionate following of support, lies waiting.