Wild Beasts: Sex-Obsessed and Scrupulously Polite

ON A BALMY APRIL MORNING in east London, Hayden Thorpe is remembering the night last September when Wild Beasts failed to win the Mercury Prize for their second album, Two Dancers. "Being nominated was like being on the Alton Towers ride Oblivion, where you're suspended over a chasm – and we saw the xx disappear into it. The morning after, I woke up and was relieved that our world was still intact."