Where the Wild Beasts Are

Here's the low down and the background to the new Wild Beasts album;

1. Present Tense is the bands fourth studio album and looks set to rival their 2009 Mercury nominated record, Two Dancers in the success stakes

2. There is a straight-up shift from indie to synth pop on the new album, no better exemplified than on the killer song 'Wanderlust'

3. Where the bands previous albums were cheeky and light-hearted, Present Tense is a lot darker, and very reminiscent of 80's brooders Tears for Fears, The Cure and Depeche Mode, it's intense and it works

4. Lead singer Hayden Thorpe courted controversy recently when he had a pop at British bands singing with American accents, with particular reference to Arctic Monkeys, asking 'Why are you sucking up? What are you sucking to get to this position?' Yikes

5. No harm in taking a quick look back to the aforementioned excellent Two Dancers album to lighten the mood a bit and note the difference in moods, here's the infectious single, 'All The King's Men'

6. Wild Beasts are playing in Dublin's Olympia Theatre next month on Saturday the 29th of March, tickets are still available, look, they're waiting for you! *(may or may not be a photo of them in The Olympia)

7. Looks like 'The God of Mod', Paul Weller is a big fan, you keep us feeling reeeeeeally young, thanks Paul!

8. The band attribute their new direction to fully embracing electronic music and after changing producer for the first time, also considered ditching their guitars altogether, but we think that would have been too much of a change too soon

9. Here's the first single off the new album, 'Sweet Spot'  (oh behave!) and it's a thing of beauty we think you will agree, we want more, and thankfully the album is out this week

10. So what's the verdict? We think Present Tense might just be Wild Beasts best album to date and we're really liking the new direction they're heading in so it's 3.5 / 5 from us