Hayden Thorpe plays Wild Beasts songs live for first time in nine years

Marked with three question marks on the programme, the 7 pm slot on the Talking Heads stage Saturday was all Thorpe’s, whose beloved band Wild Beasts last played the Dorset festival in 2016 before disbanding two years later. He hasn’t played the songs live since, finding the relearning process “more profound than I was expecting…. It’s not normal to rehearse songs and all of a sudden find yourself in tears, right?” The solo performance, for which Thorpe switched between electric guitar and piano and was backdropped by a field full of sheep — wild beasts, if you will — doesn’t mark any particular anniversary for the band that formed in 2002. “It just felt right in an unspoken way. I missed the songs. I missed feeling them in my chest. Enough time had passed. Enough peace had been made. Enough had happened.” The performance came a few months ahead of two sold-out shows at London’s Hoxton Hall, where Thorpe will again play material by his old band. Speaking to Best Fit earlier in the day, he said he needed a warmup before those gigs. “When you're in a British summer and you get in a glint of sun, November feels like some abstract concept. It's a time that will never come, so I needed ...