Radon Reviews: Plants and Animals “La La Land”
Plants and Animals have put me in a precarious position. On the one hand, what I’ve heard off their latest album The End of That has me in an anticipatory fit. On the other, it’s not out yet. So how about a primer? Let’s have a look at their previous album, La La Land, which is, it seems, just as adept at blending infectiously simple guitar strums with the subtlest of synthesizers to create something with layers and depth in a way that seems almost too simple. The good news is that it all sounds cloudy and punctuated in its own excellent way.
To draw a line between what Plants and Animals do with some other genre of music, I think their sound is fairly progressive, but in a hushed, muted way. Somewhere between Modest Mouse and Rush, Plants and Animals have carved their names in the bark. Though the guitars and the vocals resonate so well off each other that one could fall asleep in the middle, the sharpness of the percussion keeps you from losing yourself. Listen to the second and third tracks (“Swinging Bells” and “American Idol”) one after the other and you can feel the seamlessness that the band moves from 1960’s native psychedelia to its edgier 90’s revival.
