Wild Belle – review

King Tut's, Glasgow

4 / 5

  • The Guardian,
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"It's a pleasure to sing to a room full of beautiful faces," says Natalie Bergman, confirming the upbeat worldview of Chicagoan brother-sister duo Wild Belle. Judging by their breezy dancehall pop, the glass is not only half-full, but has a cocktail umbrella in it, too. Under this spring's grey skies, Wild Belle's recent debut album, Isles, feels like a time capsule sent back from summer 2013 with the implied message that it's going to be a scorcher.

  1. Wild Belle
  2. Green Door Store,
  3. Brighton
  1. On 3 April
  2. Box office:
    0871 220 0260
  3. Venue website

Live, they're backed by a trio of guitar, bass and drums, who cannot help but fade into the background compared with the smiling, sultry-voiced Natalie, who sways and pirouettes throughout, locking eyes with random punters as if challenging them to mirror her dancing, which many do. Her elder brother, Elliot, marshals a stack of synths and triggers dubby FX, periodically stepping forward to blast out a riff on his battered baritone sax. His assured way of hoisting this much-maligned brass beast is surprisingly magnetic.

The Bergmans are an effective tag-team of sunny seduction and their songs have a shininess and immediacy, from the Fela Kuti guitar patterns and sugarsnap snare beat of Twisted to the vintage skank and parping bassline of It's Too Late. There are also moments of menace, though: Another Girl has an accusatory tinge and manages to make steel drum samples sound baleful.

Elliot tells a rambling tale about dossing in a Scottish castle, before taking vocals for When It's Over, an oddly buoyant breakup song that takes some cues from Mercury Rev. They play all 11 songs from Isles in a slightly reshuffled order, a fun but wispy set. It seeds these earworms ahead of festival season, where Wild Belle's songs can roam free in their natural habitat.


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