#244 Wild Beasts – Smother

The Indie 500 Podcast is back from a long summer hiatus, and Season 3 opens with Wild Beasts' 2011 album Smother, sitting at #244 on NME's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Neither host had heard it before this week — no Limbo Panto, no Two Dancers, no Hayden Thorpe falsetto — which makes this a genuine first-listen deep dive into one of the strangest, most committed art-pop records British indie produced in the 2010s.

We start with a Season 3 warm-up: 90s guilty pleasures, top three each. Eurodance obsessions (Alice DJ's ”Better Off Alone,” Culture Beat's ”Mr. Vain”), George Michael's ”Freedom! '90,” Madonna's ”Like a Prayer,” The Cardigans' ”Lovefool,” and the strange true story of Stardust's ”Music Sounds Better with You” — the one-off Paris side project that turned down $3 million from Virgin and quietly became the prototype for Daft Punk's Discovery.

Then the band history: two 16-year-olds at Queen Katherine School in Kendal, Cumbria, naming themselves after the Fauvist painters because there was nothing else to do; the move to Leeds; Tom Fleming joining on bass and bringing the baritone that makes the two-voice Wild Beasts sound work; Bad Sneakers Records, the signing to Domino, Limbo Panto, and the Mercury-nominated breakthrough Two Dancers.

Our World Context segment plants Smother in May 9, 2011: Katy Perry's ”E.T.” at #1 in the US, LMFAO's ”Party Rock Anthem” all over the UK, Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party rising out of post-recession anger, the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, the royal wedding, the bin Laden raid, the debut of Minecraft and Angry Birds, and Rebecca Black's ”Friday” inventing the modern viral pile-on.

The making of section covers the East London basement demos, the retreat to Bryn Derwen studio in Snowdonia, producer Richard Formby as unofficial fifth member and tiebreaker, and a recording philosophy built on subtraction, improvisation, and one-take crudeness — including a piece of ”Albatross” tracked into a MacBook mic at 3 a.m. Plus Thorpe on intimacy, lust, and lyrics as self-discovery, and the near-unanimous 2011 press: NME 9/10, Pitchfork 8.2, a UK #17 chart peak.

Then the honest verdict — a divisive falsetto, an acquired taste, and two hosts who land on real respect for a record they may not revisit — with time for ”Bed of Nails,” ”Plaything,” ”Loop the Loop,” ”Burning,” and the closing stretch of ”End Come Too Soon,” and an argument that Smother is secretly the best 80s throwback of 2011.

The Eye of Agamotto hits #244 across the multiverse: Kanye's 808s & Heartbreak, Pavement, Dazed and Confused, Twister, and J.G. Ballard's High Rise. We spin the wheel for next week and land on De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising — plus an upcoming interview with grunge author Gillian Gaar.

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