If you’re going to spend five albums exploring one theme, then you better make sure to pick an interesting one. It’s something that Wild Beasts seem to agree with, as they’ve chosen to unpick, celebrate, and chastise masculinity across their 10-year-old career. In the past few years, however, other artists have also chosen to look at how exactly men are expected to act. One need only look at Frank Ocean’s recent Blonde, or tracks from Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly like ‘u’ and ‘The Blacker the Berry’, to see musicians looking inwards and questioning their role as a man. What, then, has driven this trend?

Wild Beasts’ Tom Fleming isn’t entirely sure. “I think maybe the whole issue of gender fluidity and the visibility of feminism has played a part. My view of feminism has always been that it was a challenge to the patriarchy, which harms us all: maybe it’s coming to a head and people are finding the cracks.”

As Fleming notes, Wild Beasts have always “gone for the wounded, brooding, guilt-ridden masculinity.” Nevertheless, the band’s most recent album, Boy King, marked something of a shift. While Wild Beasts have never been afraid of dabbling in the ridiculous, earlier records were more pensive and only darkly threatening. Boy King saw the band adopt a much more brash, bolshy, and confident sound. 

“On the surface it’s celebratory,” Fleming does admit, but “if I may be so bold I think we’ve been a bit misinterpreted. People think ‘oh, they’ve gone all macho, they’ve decided to be a Kings-of-Leon-style rock band’.” What, then, is the difference with Boy King and Wild Beasts?

“I feel like the anger on the record is directed inwards. I think the record is like you’re putting on a version of yourself that you want the world to see.”

The superficial differences are obvious for all to hear, though, and Fleming does not pretend that the band were unaware that they were creating something new. “It would be facetious to say we were unconscious of the differences. We were following our curiosity: we had listened to a lot of harder music, whereas previously we’d listened to a lot of ambient and synth stuff.”

“This time, we really engaged with rock music – from Van Halen down, bands like Poison, proper metal too. We found a way of getting a handle on it.” 

Are this Pitchfork and Mercury-Prize-approved band really admitting to being influenced by such unfashionable bands? “It’s great: really fertile ground for exploration. It was kind of something we weren’t supposed to do, which is always an attractive proposition  – when something is left out in the cold by critics I always think ‘oh, you don't know what you’re talking about.’ I used to think of music like a critic, but I really don’t now.”

“This record was almost like critic-bait. I think it was more divisive than I expected; I thought they’d just like it. Some people haven’t got it, some people have got it and haven’t liked it, but most people have got on board with what we’re trying to do. It’s not an intellectual exercise, though – it’s a full-on rock n’ roll record.”

Despite the playful attempts at confounding what critics are expecting, Fleming makes clear that Wild Beasts are not going to try and second guess what their audience want. “Without wishing to sound arrogant, you can’t let the tail wag the dog. You’ve really got to take a lead, have an idea.”

Talk of critics also raises the question of what a mid-level indie band like Wild Beasts count as success. “I don’t wanna play to fewer people than on the last record!” is the immediate response, before Fleming pauses to think.

“You’ve got to remember what it was like when all of us were young and in small towns; feeling alienated, patronised, and silence. If you’re reaching out to them, if they feel you’re hearing their discontent, that’s great.”

Fleming is also quite candid about Wild Beasts' level of fame. “There’s still people who would like us who haven’t heard of us! I think people hear echoes of our records in other bands and don’t know we exist. It’s up to us to still be knocking on the door.”

Not that Fleming is asking for sympathy. “I’m not living in a squat – I want to make that clear, and nor should artists expect to, but certainly playing shows and having people hear the record and say that was really important to me, that’s huge.”

It is hard to take issue with Wild Beasts’ approach. They forgo the ‘indie for the sake of it’ attitude which more than a handful of musicians are guilty of, and it’s refreshing to hear a band quite openly say they want to play to more and more people. Masculinity, passion, and 2016 being what they are, it seems unlikely they’ll run out of things to talk about.