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Product details
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Track Listings
| 1. Dark Horse |
| 2. As I Lay My Head Down |
| 3. For 12 |
| 4. Tamer Animals |
| 5. Dust Bowl III |
| 6. Weather |
| 7. Old Statues |
| 8. Woodwind |
| 9. Desert |
| 10. Landforms |
| 11. Heading East |
Product Description
Review
Tamer Animals is the Oklahoma quintet's second album, following 2009's eponymous album and, back in 2006, the debut under former alias Kunek. Neither matches this watermark of quiet grandeur or strikes the same balance between lavishness and restraint. If band lynchpin Jesse Tabish's choruses don't instantly lasso like, say, Adele or a Simon Cowell prodigy, his tunes appear to swoon through the air and might haunt your deep sleep. File under Pastoral Americana alongside Fleet Foxes and Midlake (you could bet your house on at least three members sporting beards), but there is a major difference: Tabish worships instrumental music, and classical minimalists Steve Reich and Philip Glass, which accounts for the album's pulsating orchestrations. Piano, bassoon, bass clarinet, violin, trumpet, French horn, cello - in Tabishworld, instruments harmonise as much as, if not more than, voices. If his restrained, wistful, almost shy vocal is double-tracked for bonus comfort, it's an unbroken stretch of land away from Crosby, Stills & Nash and any notion of 70s retro.
Even more than Tabish's influences, there's liable to be something in Oklahoma's water, or those huge skies, that gives Other Lives their panoramic aura. Perhaps Tabish is the modern equivalent of the 'singing cowboy', roaming that prairie and drinking up the Mexican and Anglo-Saxon influences from America's south-west (though strictly speaking, Oklahoma is north of Texas and geographically central-southern) which moulded the 'Western' half of C&W.
Lyrically as well, Tabish sounds enthralled by nature's ineffable power. Old Statues - the most Morricone-esque cut, with a fantastic lonesome patina - documents how man-made structures will eventually fall back to earth. Other tracks are titled Dust Bowl III, Weather and Desert, reinforcing Tabish's minimalist bent. There is an orchestral finale, Heading East (so not the usual western gold trail to California? East to Reich and Glass in New York, perhaps?), but even here he manages to embrace 'epic' without a hint of bombast, and all in two-and-a-half minutes. For all Tamer Animals' expansive horizons, its only lasts 40 minutes. But it's the most uniquely sublime, meticulous and heroic 40 minutes of 2011.
--Martin Aston
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
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Customer Reviews
Lush and wistful,beautifully produced and an absolute delight on the ears. It has a similar feel to Fleet Foxes, but where they sound like something else in a modern day guise this lot are far from copyists, with hints at Sigur Ros mixed in there.
This is their second offering and is an altogethor different creature, full of wonderful orchestration with violin, trumpet,french horn, cello etc etc, it transports you into a world of almost minimalist classical composition, but holds back sufficiently to not be overblown or pompous.
Not a hint of harshness, lyrically or musically, it just washes over you, track after track, effortlessly sliding into your subconscious in a way I haven't encountered previously.
The band has spent 3 years fine tuning every meticulous detail on this album and it shows, whilst equally sounding effortless it is also deliciously complex and enthralling, a total contradiction, in that its some of the most relaxing music you are likely to hear yet utterly engaging.
Musically it lies somewhere between what is termed neu folk (I know I'm not keen on it either, but it gives you an idea) and some sort of soundtrack to a modern day spaghetti western.
I have never given an album 5 stars, perfection is something I have not come across in 40 years of being serious about music, but heck, this comes as close as perfect as I have heard. so 4 and a half stars at least.
Do not hesitate to buy this, I'm surprised it doesn't come with a money back guarantee in the event of dissatisfaction.
S.R.J
Having read up a bit more on the band I know that they started as an instrumental 3-piece and although they now are a quintet they pride themselves on their musical arrangements. It shows! The strings, piano and cello create beautiful sound-scapes (For 12), the driving drums make a few of the tracks quite epic, especially when played at a loud volume (Tamer Animals/ Dust Bowl III), and all this is fronted by fantastic melodies, thoughtful lyrics and great harmonies.
For me there's not one bad track on this album, so glad I happened upon them by chance. The best CD I've bought this year.
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