Wild Beasts / Napoleon IIIrd / Olo Worms

The current music scene seems to be at saturation point with solo female artists, last year it was the yawn-soul of Duffy and Adele at the forefront and this year it's the turn of electro-girls with Little Boots, Lady GaGa, Ladyhawke and Santogold all making swift progress. However, tonight it's the all about the boys, but not the usual indie landfill that has also been clogging up the charts, it's a treat of an eclectic line-up with three artists all doing something just that little bit different.



With all three sets of equipment on the already compact stage of The Lousiana in Bristol there's not alot of room for the local four-piece that is the multi-instrumented Olo Worms. With a penchant for using household items as instruments, like, ummm, Sellotape, these chaps come across like a lounge-core Hot Chip or a fucked-up Beta Band with cubes of Lemon Jelly thrown into the pudding, ie. thoroughly enjoyable, if a bit daft. After set-closer 'The Barbershop' (complete with accompanying electric razor) someone in the crowd is heard to say "What the hell was that?". I'm sure the Olo Worms would have been happy with that response.



Napoleon IIIrd's stage set up looks intriguing with two sets of reel-to-reel tapes either side of the stage. Napoleon IIIrd is infact singer-songwriter James Mabbett promoting his new E.P. 'Hideki Yukawa' the follow up to the highly-acclaimed album 'In Debt To'. Imagine if Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly was to go slightly psychotic, write some decent tunes, run away with the travelling circus and man the waltzers and you'd be some way towards the kind of messed-up ramshackle of noise that this one man could produce with help from the backing tracks on his reel-to-reel. Adding his husky, sometimes shouty voice to the vintage sounding loops with jagged guitar and some brass we get a great concoction of fuzzed up brilliance with hints of superb songmanship, as demonstrated on the great single 'Hit Schmooze For Me'.

The debut Wild Beasts album was well received in the press and in the blogworld, but even with a summer full of festival appearances they didn't quite cross over into the big league. This might be due to the vocals of Hayden 'The Voice' Thorpe's gravelly falsetto being not quite to everyone's taste, but tonight, fresh out of second album sessions more of the vocals on the new tracks seem to be shared more evenly with bandmate Tom Fleming, also blessed with a strong voice, but at a sharp opposite to the Antony Hegarty/Russell Mael warblings of Thorpe.



The band seemed delighted with the opportunity to try out the new tracks (over half the set was new material) which compared well with the first album, and sounded possibly even more consistently brilliant. None of the new track names were shared with the crowd but they could easily be what is needed to make the breakthrough. Wild Beasts are one of the UK's most genuinely original bands with vast sonics, gorgeous vocals, ridiculous lyrics (like "...Take these chips with cheese as an offering of peace..." from 'Please. Sir') and have a real English feel.

Originally perceived as being in a similar vein to Mika after single Assembly, which perhaps wisely was left off the album and out of tonight's set, Wild Beasts have crafted a niche in eccentric operatic pop as displayed perfectly during The Devil's Crayon, and the apt and beautiful 'Cheerio Chaps, Cheerio Goodbye'. Big things are expected this year.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.