Hayden Thorpe
Diviner
Release Date: May 24, 2019
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Domino Recording Co. Ltd.
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Album Review: Diviner by Hayden Thorpe
Excellent, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 4
When Wild Beasts announced their amicable split in September 2017, it was perhaps inevitable Hayden Thorpe would be the first of the four to put his head above the parapet and release a solo album. Yet as has been shown on many occasions, going it alone is a risky business in music. There might be the benefits of artistic freedom and the stage is yours to command - but at the same time it can be a lonely existence, the glare of the spotlight at complete odds with the solitary existence.
Based on rating 4/5
On fifth album 'Boy King' - Wild Beasts' last before the Kendal kings decided to call it a day at the start of 2018 - frontman Hayden Thorpe spent his time rutting and thrusting through the most lascivious material of the band's decade-long career. Regularly clad in leather trench-coat and black shades, his new vibe was less decadent dandy of old and more a kind of sexy Neo from The Matrix. On the cover of solo LP 'Diviner''s title track, we found the singer topless and monochrome, staring into the middle distance like a Calvin Klein model; so far, so hot under the collar.
Based on rating 4/5
The former Wild Beasts frontman's first solo album is a collection of muted, lovelorn piano ballads that twists and reshapes the form into fascinating new spheres There was always a sense of unfinished business about Wild Beasts, the horny, sensitive four-piece who surprised fans when they called it a day in 2017, with five - well, four - acclaimed albums to their name. Their first four records were distinctly idiosyncratic and British, all Baroque-pop and frontman Hayden Thorpe's divisive falsetto vocal, which delivered musings on sex and masculinity with a lightness out of step with many of their mid-noughties indie peers. Yet 2016's 'Boy King', recorded in Dallas, Texas with uber-producer John Congleton, beefed up the sound as they indulged in a rockier American aesthetic.
Based on rating 7.5/10
Despite bearing all the hallmarks of a classic break-up album - the pained, fragile vocal delivery, the sparse arrangements, the directness of the lyrics - Hayden Thorpe's Diviner is not, in fact, the product of a clichéd boy-meets-girl > boy-gets-heart-broken > boy-sings-of-his-heartbreak kind of narrative. It's more of a boy-meets-three-other-boys > boys-spend-17-years-together-in-a-band > band-breaks-up-leaving-boy-alone story. That old chestnut.
Opinion: Excellent
When a seminal band calls it a day it's hard to take. It's even harder when you factor in that the band didn't, really, put a foot wrong. This was the feeling when Wild Beasts decided to call it a day. Now frontman Hayden Thorpe has emerged from a period of creative hibernation with his debut solo album 'Diviner'.
'Diviner'
is available now