Earlier in the year a band from the UK, Wild Beats, bombarded listeners with their debut album Limbo, Ponto – a jumpy, fiery, impulsive album that was a challenge and surprise to people who took the time to listen. Some were turned off by the loose and ambitious record, which was largely defined by front man Hayden Thorpe’s shrieking, purring and bellowing falsetto. For the listeners who could accept the excessive flailing and spent time with the record, it was clear that Wild Beasts was a band worth paying attention to.

Well, luckily, just as the indie music scene was beginning to move on with life, Wild Beasts have returned with their second album, Two Dancers, delivering on the expectations laid out by their first record and giving us one of the most eccentric and beautiful albums of the year in the process. Their layered compositions, enticing melodies and whimsical, fantastical, and often humorous lyrics (“a girl before bouncing round behind the bedroom door”) are still intact. Thorpe’s swooping voice, the bands undoubted trademark is also still in full force. Yet, unlike Limbo, Ponto, which was in many ways teetered under its own reckless abandon as if Thorpe and company weren’t sure which directions they songs were heading – though that may have very well been the point-- their new album is more cohesive and fluid.

The albums first track is The Fun Powder Plot, whose simple wood percussion and histrionic guitars layer upon one another as Thorpe warbles fluidly over the band in his lush, theatrical voice. Immediately noticeable is that his falsetto sounds more restrained than when last heard in January. Instead of assaulting our ears with a range far beyond a normally modulated voice, on Two Dancers he seems to be luring us in with enticing flourishes and smoother vocal transitions, like a dude version of Odysseus’ sirens. The band, which is more confident and relaxed here than on their debut radiates a new confidence that makes them more accessible to first time listeners. Despite this new accessibility, the band still possesses an abundance of wild, reckless tendencies. On “Hooting and Howling”, arguably the strongest song on the album, Thorpe sings about the simple joys of being brutish and acting out. If the Vikings had iTunes in their dining halls, this track would surely have been on the playlist somewhere. With lyrics that contrast their subjects “equally eloquent and ugly” behavior that “thrilled “ as well as “appalled”, the Wild Beasts repeatedly call attention to the coexistence of the beautiful and the strange, the haunting and the fascinating –a mood and theme that is explored consistently throughout Two Dancers.

Another strong plus for this album are the powerful contributions of bass guitarist Fleming, who sings on four of the album’s songs, and whose low octave droll of a voice is the perfect counterpart to Thorpe’s wobble and eccentricity. On the album’s title track, Fleming recounts a hazy episode of physical abuse that explores the collision of violence and romance. Topped by the lyric, “do you want my heart between your teeth?” the song exudes a fog of mystery and surreal beauty, that despite now familiar post-punk-tribal drumming manages to sound inspired and lively.

Taking everything good about their first album and fine-tuning it over eleven fine-crafted songs - and by adding the voice of bass guitarist Fleming - the Wild Beasts are on track to becoming one of England’s most recognizable bands. Too scruffy and dark for the twee crowd, yet too playful and whimsical to draw direct comparisons to more mature bands, Wild Beasts are truly their own beast - a group that can’t be easily pinned down or summarized in pat musical cliché. Yes, Two Dancers is one of the most rewarding listens in 2009 and one can only hope the band continue down the same path that brought them here from their first album.