Other Lives - Tamer Animals
Open-mouthed.
One remains like this, for forty minutes, while gazing at the sky with disenchantment, poetry, resignation, joy pulled with the handbrake on but still, and a dense propensity for reflection.
The creator of all this is a band that escapes clichés, herdsmen in a crowd of bison waiting to find food in these delightful compositions, where the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem to be the temporal space of tales, stories and fables revolving around the relationship with nature. A maturity conferred by a long writing process, by leaving the debut album behind and shedding kilos to streamline the single thought and place it with ease within musical afflatuses that surround the poetry and cuddle it, on a stormy day when the group from Stillwater (Oklahoma, USA) walks in the open spaces knocking down houses, buildings and similar obscenities. With these songs we return to thinking about ourselves by abandoning the objectification and worrying about asking ourselves questions, giving time a way to provide us with answers. It is folk, processed, contemplated, put in the position of seeking allies, of giving Chamber Pop a new identity, of making friends with Progressive and the most mysterious and barely perceptible Psychedelia, in a game of relentless and attractive ups and downs.
The harmonies are rarefied, warm, always respectful, sometimes with obvious fascinations for a cinematographic use of music (the Sixties), at other times the emphasis is placed on individual notes, dryly, precisely, but always with delicacy, paying attention to the choruses and also using instruments not usual in these contexts, such as castanets, bassoons, violins, horn, with the result of filing a symphonic spirit that makes many aspects in their visionary attitude evident. The rarefaction, the delicacy, the softness reveal how the record is a respectful action towards open spaces, an awe that shows the almost silent approach towards this natural infinity. The melancholic drifts are skilful in painting the walls of the sky, through a captivating sensorial dynamism, where joy and sadness play at brushing fingers, to continue in enchanting rhythmic chases, without ever resembling typical pop and/or rock expressions. In short, there are many aspects that play in favour of a simple and truthful statement: a work that is a jewel, capable of insinuating itself in the mind for repeated listening, as if the film they produced had a way of being a very long first viewing. Evident is the typical structure of classical music, namely that of bringing the imagination inside things, between thoughts, a portentous unicum, which here does not need its own explosions because it is capable of blowing up our listening apparatus...
No wishful thinking but a substantial capacity to give the songs the dress of an intense day and make them live like an elegant, airy, lively but never cloying dream. Here, then, is the landing, the docking that has an ecstatic nerve, little practised in music, which is that which is specified in the involvement of stories with adequate safety belts, a short journey but full of horizons. Obsessions, cognitive oscillations and a long visit inside the cave of all fears are lined up in a visual chamber that grants quivers and smiles, in which the melody seems to become with the passing minutes a friendly witch, a druid's niece, a cousin of a storm that illuminates the beauty of this rapid visit into perceptive microcosms.
In conclusion: if the dilations preserve the core, then nothing can be objected as Tamer Animals is a timeless gem waiting to be kissed by generous listening...
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
25th June 2024
https://open.spotify.com/album/49Q3cWuak1XlkKANPfAadt?si=5IqonCbQTOm1QZ7ayKnaaw
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