Fusing together a series of strikingly inspired influences– from the vocal acrobatics of Sparks or the Associates to the firm production and galloping percussion of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love — UK art-pop quartet Wild Beasts have arrived at a sound both comfortingly familiar and distinctly eccentric. When frontman Hayden Thorpe isn’t moaning or cooing catty double entendres, he’s brandishing a dramatic falsetto or unleashing glass-shattering shrieks, projecting the vulnerability and depravity of his sexually frustrated protagonists. In contrast to the fidgety, impulsive rock of their promising 2008 debut Limbo, Panto , Two Dancers finds Wild Beasts refashioned as a steely art-funk outfit that’s all the more alluring for its newfound austerity.