Plants And Animals 'The Jungle' (ALBUM REVIEW)

The seldom dull Canadian trio ‘Plants and Animals’ return after a four-year hiatus with ‘The Jungle’. Released on 23^rd October, it’s the band’s fifth album, again on Secret City Records, Messrs Spicer, Woodley and Basque seemingly intent on prolonging the listener’s woozy chill-out experience from the outro of ‘Waltzed in from the Rumbling’ albeit perhaps transported to the chaotic set of Jumanji.

Album opener and title track blends taut Hooky-era bass swathed in the sound of crickets reminiscent of REM’s ‘You are the Everything’, an unsettling and expansive nocturnal wilderness, prey frantically fleeing hungry predators in the gloom. ‘Sacrifice’ explores this relationship further, a sort of Zep ‘Four Sticks’ meets an inversion of BC Camplight’s ‘Back to Work’… leaving one craving a bit more order and structure to this untamed outback…..where’s Tarzan when you need him?       

 

Plants and Animals’ increasing propensity for electronica is showcased in ‘House on Fire’ the groove as urgent as the song’s title suggests, dirty analogue squidges vying with two-handed hi-hat, a sure-fire floor filler in the making, that’s assuming we’ll one day be allowed to return to clubbing.

 

All of the above and more coalesce on dreamy album highlight ‘Le Queens’ with the arrival of guest Quebecker Adèle Trottier-Rivard and her beautifully breathy Gallic femme-fatale vocal setting the listener’s pulse racing, queasy guitar competing, sounding like it’s been played back on a tape machine whose batteries are about to run flat.  The wooziness continues on ‘In Your Eyes’ a heartfelt ode to an uncertain future, awash with restless and squeamish guitars, the grogginess leaking into closer ‘Bold’ before the anthemic chorus acts like the much needed adrenaline shot required to snap you out of your sonically induced torpor.

 

Fingers crossed next year’s live shows on this side of the pond go ahead. 

Words - Mike Price

Plants And Animals official