Saturday, December 24, 2011

STN Albums Of The Year no.7: Other Lives - Tamer Animals

While it's tempting to put Other Lives' pastoral, harmonic arrangements and Jesse Tabish's wisftul voice down to a Fleet Foxes constituency, the grand panorama within which Tamer Animals' sonic field resides is much wider, a lushly arranged chamber odd-folk in which every layer, voice and instrument adds something to the cinematic scope. Every production nuance is beautifully crafted and conceived, a richly majestic palette of underplayed strings, propelling horns and percussion filling in the gaps textured by a post-Grizzly Bear sweep of keyboard textures and multi-instrumental washes in which atmosphere almost creates melody but always remembers to place actual instrumentation at or near the centre. From under audible huge skies and on wide prairies is located a blissfully transient collection that values stillness as much as propulsion. The year's sleeper hit.

[iTunes]
[Amazon]
[Spotify]

1 comment:

Breaking More Waves Blog said...

Very pleased to see this in your list Simon. Now hoping that with yr vote and my vote it might even sneak into your bloggers album of the year poll !