Smother is the third studio album

Studio album

A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...

 by British indie rock

Indie rock

Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...

/dream pop

Dream pop

Dream pop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s, when bands like The Passions, Dif Juz, Lowlife and A.R. Kane began fusing post-punk and ethereal experiments with bittersweet pop melodies into dreamy, sensual soundscapes. The term was almost...

 band Wild Beasts

Wild Beasts

Wild Beasts are an indie rock band from Kendal in Cumbria. They released their first single, "Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants", on Bad Sneakers Records in November 2006, and subsequently signed to Domino Records. They have released three acclaimed albums, Limbo, Panto in 2008, Two Dancers in...

 released on 9 May 2011 by Domino Records. It reached #17 in the UK Albums Chart

UK Albums Chart

The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

. According to the band, it represents a more synthesiser-oriented sound, influenced by "moving to Dalston

Dalston

Dalston is a district of north-east London, England, located in the London Borough of Hackney. It is situated northeast of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...

", Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist...

, minimalist

Minimalist music

Minimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....

 composer Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

, noise pop

Noise pop

Noise pop is a subgenre of alternative rock developed in the mid 1980s in the UK and US, that mixes atonal noise or feedback, or both, with the melodic instrumentation and production elements more often found in pop music, making it more melodic and angst-free than noise rock.-History:Noise pop has...

 duo Fuck Buttons

Fuck Buttons

Fuck Buttons are a two-piece electronic group formed in Bristol in 2004 by Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power.-Biography:Hung and Power grew up in Worcester. Hung was influenced by Aphex Twin, while Power was a fan of Mogwai. They developed a friendship in 2004 while attending art school in...

, and Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...

's book, Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...

.

Background

The band moved to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 to make the record and that, according to Hayden Thorpe, drew them "back to the Lake District

Lake District

The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...

, the soundcape of that place. "Smother refers to the pillow we were resting our heads - the album really was the place where our heads, thoughts and dreams were at the time... The duality of the word 'smother' is important to us as well - that mad human dynamic of doing the right things for all the wrong reasons or doing the wrong things for all the right reasons", the singer said.

Reception

Reviewing the album for BBC Music

BBC Music

BBC Music is a team working in the department of Audio and Music Interactive at the BBC. Responsible for the BBC Music website - the portal site to music content across the BBC website....

, Mike Diver

Mike Diver

Mike Diver is a British music journalist. He started his career at music website Drowned in Sound, where he became editor, before moving on in 2008 to become editor of Clash magazine's website. He has contributed to several magazines including NME and Rock Sound.Diver is currently album reviews...

 wrote, "[Wild Beasts] are, right now, the most inspirational, intriguing, effortlessly enrapturing band at work [in Britain]. And Smother might well prove to be the album of 2011." Jon Pareles of The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

said, "In songs suffused with need and vulnerability, the music leaves itself open, waiting to be approached."

Track listing

1. "Lion's Share" – 4:14
2. "Bed of Nails" – 4:18
3. "Deeper" – 3:01
4. "Loop the Loop" – 4:06
5. "Plaything" – 4:21
6. "Invisible" – 2:58
7. "Albatross" – 3:12
8. "Reach a Bit Further" – 3:36
9. "Burning" – 4:44
10. "End Come Too Soon" – 7:32

Personnel

• Hayden Thorpe – lead vocals (tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 & 10), backing vocals, guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, production
• Tom Fleming – lead vocals (tracks 1, 3, 6, 8 & 9), backing vocals, keyboards, guitar, production
• Ben Little – lead guitar, keyboards, production
• Chris Talbot – drums, production
• Richard Formby – production, additional arrangements
• Lexxx – mixing
• Dave Pye – engineering
• Jason Evans – photography, art direction, design
• Matthew Cooper – design