Animal Youth
Animal
(Weyrd Son Records)
Animal Youth has created a thoroughly decent, moody jam session of an album with their Animal release. The band is a new project, described by the band as having risen “from the ashes” of Siamese Queens. One of the few songs released by Siamese Queens, which produced music significantly harder than that produced by Animal Youth, is, in fact, called “Animal Youth.”
Animal is a refreshing work, one that lingers in the mind after listening to it like a pleasant aftertaste of food. The lyrical imagery combined with deep basslines creates a morbid and yet remarkably attractive listening experience. Songs like “Love You (When You’re Dead),” on which the band’s front man seems to sing “I will rip you off, ‘cause I love you when you’re dead; you know I’ll never give up… you’ll love me when I’m dead” build up through the course of the record to create something thought provoking and yet also worthy of just turning on to let play in the background.
Animal is reminiscent of the ethereal European pop of bands like The Cure, and even within the confines of an already long played out musical genre, the group still manages to pull of a notably original, unique record. The basslines are repetitive, but not overly so, and it’s the same for the lyrics. The lyrics of the album and the mood they evoke is repetitive, but still pointed. Sometimes, as Animal Youth shows with their new release, simplicity is worth sticking with.
The album gets significantly faster paced around the middle, on the track “You Don’t Know Love.” That track could be said to be almost angry or confrontational.
Following “You Don’t Know Love,” however, the album progresses to finish off even more meditatively than it began. The next to last track, “In Heaven,” features the same lyric repeated over and over again: “In heaven, everything is fine; you’ve got your good things, and I’ve got mine.”
Truly a band worth paying attention to in the European musical scene.
