THERE’s more to Kendal than mint cake. The town was famous for green cloth woven for archers at Agincourt and the most recent claim to fame is Wild Beasts, one of our most innovative and vital bands.

They’re renowned for a keenness to push musical boundaries too, so their fourth album comes as a surprise. Quite simply it is a dramatic shift up-gear.

Frontmen Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming may protest a lack of desire to make adult pop, but that is precisely what Present Tense is all about. Long gone are the juvenile, if comedic, obsessions of yesteryear; in their place is a polished, more reflective take on life, with unnervingly, gorgeous and grown-up melodies such as Mecca, A Simple Beautiful Truth and Sweet Spot.

Not that you’d think so at first. Opener Wanderlust is a maelstrom of dense industrial synth, worthy of early Human League and Cabaret Voltaire, while dark tinges of Depeche Mode permeate the heart of Nature Boy.

Then there are the chalk-and-cheese vocals. Fleming has echoes of Mark Hollis and David Sylvian, while Thorpe is redolent of Haddaway, a boyhood influence with an operatic falsetto. As such it’s almost like listening to two bands.

Wild Beasts may be worlds apart from Arctic Monkeys, but there are parallels worth exploring. Both formed in 2002 as raggedy outsiders, now they are as slick as Alex Turner’s new hairstyle.

The Monkeys’ latest album has been lauded and awarded as their finest work. It is surely a matter of time before Present Tense is similarly feted.