Plants and Animals’ brand new album The Jungle is out now via Secret City Records / Remote Control. To celebrate, the band will host a listening event on YouTube and will be chatting live with fans as they listen to the record in its entirety. The event will begin on Friday 23 October at 3PM ET / Saturday 24 October at 6AM AEDT. Click here to join.
Exclaim! gave the record four stars: “The Jungle, […] clearly displays its references; this album’s transmutations, however, are the band’s most consistently sublime and seem to have been rendered effortlessly in comparison to previous work. With The Jungle, Plants and Animals claim a more definitive and cogent sense of identity, maximizing a talent for both interpretation and invention.” Rolling Stone France stated that the new album is bold: “The opus revolves around eight songs with a strong message. These musical snapshots offer a panoramic view of what the year 2020 was, its social and political crises, then the COVID-19 epidemic. The ample, solid production catches the ear and demands curiosity and attention, with its intelligent arrangements full of subtleties.” Shakenstir calls it “optimum entertainment.” Since last June the band has released four tracks from the new album. Consequence of Sound stated: “Early singles like “House on Fire” and “Sacrifice” portended a collection of catchy but chaotic sonic landscapes. The latest sample of the effort, “Le Queens,” offers a counterpoint to that aural bedlam — with a touch of Quebecois,”.
The Jungle starts with electronic drums that sound like insects at night. A whole universe comes alive in the dark. It’s beautiful, complex and unsettling. Systematic and chaotic. All instinct, no plan. Voices taunt, “yeah, yeah, yeah”. This tangled time in which we find ourselves is reflected back in shadows.
Every song is such a landscape. The first one grinds to a halt and you become a kid looking out a car window at the moon, wondering how it’s still on your tail as you speed past a steady blur of trees. You watch a house go up in a yellow strobe that echoes the disco weirdness of Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer and David Bowie. You get pummeled by a rhythm then set free by a sudden change of scenery—the wind stops, clarity returns. You’re under a streetlight in Queens, soft focus, slow motion, falling in love. You speak French now too, in case you didn’t already. Bienvenue.
These are personal experiences made in a volatile world, and they reflect that world right back at us, even by accident. There’s one song Nic sings to his teenage son who was dealing with climate change anxiety and drifting into uncharted independence. The band carries it out slowly together into a sweet blue horizon. Warren wrote the words to another shortly after losing his father. It’s about the things we inherit not necessarily being the things we want. In a broader sense, that’s where a lot of people find themselves right now.
Plants and Animals are an iconic Montreal-based trio that began playing together as kids and emerged on the international scene in 2008 with Parc Avenue. The band has developed a varied cult following ever since, built on the shoulders of their self-produced records and their intense live shows. Parc Avenue was a critically acclaimed record (Pitchfork 8/10) released during the famous Montreal-is-the-new-Seattle music moment. This release set Plants and Animals as an incredible live force, a powerful songwriting trio and opened doors for them to tour the world many times over with people like Portugal. The Man, Gnarls Barkley and more. Three other releases followed and kept the band’s status up high: La La Land (2010) “they’re complicated and gorgeous [songs] and feel as innate as desire itself.” (Paste Magazine), The End of That (2012) “vibrant, constantly rewarding” (Spin) and Waltzed in from the Rumbling (2016) “… the strike rate is remarkably high” ★★★★ (Q Magazine). The band was shortlisted (2008) and longlisted (2010) for the Polaris Music Prize and received multiple Juno Awards and ADISQ Awards nominations over the years.
Purchase / Stream The Jungle https://plantsandanimals.lnk.
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