Wild Beasts - Boy King, review: ‘more gripping than ever’

Wild Beasts’ band name has at times seemed ironic, when the Cumbrian quartet’s main singer, Hayden Thorpe, delivers restrained, late night indie rock in a foppish falsetto.

For this fifth album, he has talked about unleashing his “inner Byron” and attempting to unite the worlds of Justin Timberlake and Nine Inch Nails. That unlikely mission statement means menacing, rumbling guitar and lyrics about sex on Tough Guy, and Thorpe singing “You can stuff your chastity” over a dense wall of sound on He the Colossus.

Yet there’s a sense of masculine confusion beneath the posturing, especially when Tom Fleming sings “I wanna feel outrageous” on Get My Bang, a song about shopping.