This is the age of the overstatement. After Alex’n’Miles’ turtlenecked quests, Wild Beasts are another gang of young, Northern, guitar-wielding lads gloriously refusing to conform to scruffy type.

Instead, their MO is a kind of toppling music-hall melodrama, filtered through Orange Juice‘s foppish abandon or The Triffids‘ poised, preening pop.

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Hayden Norman Thorpe’s falsetto squawk is the controversial focal point but his lust for language is equally extraordinary, applying the apparatus of Coward-esque farce to non-league football scandal on the flabbergasting mini-epic “Woebegone Wanderers”.

Meanwhile, the only real precedent for “She Purred While I Grrred” is the bawdy young Morrissey of “Handsome Devil”.

SAM RICHARDS