The Sound Of Animals Fighting - The Ocean and the Sun
Rating
RIYL
The Mars VoltaAnthony Green
Rx Bandits
Tracklist
1. Intro2. The Ocean And The Sun
3. I, The Swan
4. Another Leather Lung
5. Lude
6. Cellophane
7. The Heraldic Beak Of The Manufacturer's Medallion
8. Chinese New Year
9. Uzbekistan
10. Blessings Be Yours Mister V
11. Ahab
12. On The Occasion Of Wet Snow
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The Lynx, the Walrus, the Nightingale, and the Skunk are back (for those of you who don't know, that's Anthony Green and a few guys from Rx Bandits) for their third and final album, The Ocean and The Sun. The band’s debut, Tiger & the Duke was groundbreaking in the way it was recorded, using influences from jazz fusion, where everyone in the band improvised their recording sessions over music they’d never heard before, and the outcome was pretty impressive. Their sophomore record, Lover, The Lord Has Left Us, had fans raising their eyebrows at the new avant garde sound featuring Craig Owens from Chiodos. The Ocean and The Sun is simply a mixture of the overall sound from the previous two albums and, in the end, a pretty solid spin.
There’s a good balance of spastic quick paced jam outs, a la something from Tiger & the Duke, and softer more laid back sections reminiscent of something off of the previous record. In fact, some parts of the songs sound like they came right out of sections of the last two discs. For instance, the latter section of “Cellophane” suddenly transitions from a rather melodic song to a fast paced heavy outro that sounds like something The Mars Volta would bust into.
Anthony Green does a good job of adding hype around the band, but a lot of the better vocal sections on this album aren't his, which really makes songs like “I, The Swan” and “Blessings Be Yours Mister V” stand out. Some of the longer, more epic tracks on this album are jammed with a slew of instruments and make things quite enjoyable to listen to with headphones on. It takes a few listens to hear the tiers of sound, but the overall song writing and musicianship is a definite improvement over Lover, The Lord Has Left Us.
The main problem with this band is that they plague themselves by adding too many filler moments to each album. Tiger & the Duke had 5 interludes that didn’t go with the rest of the music at all, while Lover, The Lord Has Left Us had way too many filler moments spaced about, and now The Ocean and The Sun has a pointless introduction and a few annoying instrumental tracks that just ruin the flow of the album.
There are a few songs that end yet there are still 2-3 minutes of noise and female narration between the end of the music and the next track that totally kills the flow and momentum of the CD. The psychedelic “Uzbekistan” is a definite grower, but the song is a frantic jam out that has an almost 3 minute outro of whispers and narration. This album will go into the category of albums that could have been better if there wasn’t so much pointless filler, such as The Mars Volta’s Frances The Mute and Tool’s 10,000 Days.
Luckily the songs themselves are strong enough to keep this record in rotation. The ending track, “On The Occasion of Wet Snow,” is quite an album closer and deserves mention as possibly the band’s best track of their career. The build up is incredibly satisfying and the track ends with a heck of a punch. In all, this is a very good album that could have been even better, but the animals still proved that they can write a solid three-album discography.
--Chris Pandolfo
Comments
Minnesota
Find me EVERYWHERE:
Fishers, Indiana
Top Albums: 2011 | 2010 | 2009 || Tumblr | Twitter
nj
what is there to get? bunch of guys with instrumentals recording those instruments.
also, i feel the tiger and the duke suffers from way too much filler.
Toronto
VT
Yea, well what isn't filler on that album is pure fucking gold. BTW, your avatar makes me laugh.
My Top Songs of '09
The Appleseed Cast//as the little things go
Caspian//sycamore
Sunwrae//Chinook Winds
Dredg//down to the seller
If These Trees Could Talk//the sun is in the north
From Monument to Masses//an ounce of prevention
Straylight Run//i'm through with the past
LpShinobi's Post-Rock and Shoegazing Recommendation, via YouTube
Lpshinobi's Post-Rock Band, New Song Posted
edit: And what's this about it being their final album? I agree that they'd only just started to tap their potential, so if that's true, what a shitty idea on their part.
Beer Blog
Fort Bragg, CA
Beer Blog
nj
Senegal Africa
Listening to:
fuckin african mosques (Tang na bu baax)
Fishers, Indiana
In the interview with Rich within which we learned of the new album in the first place, he mentioned that the project was a trilogy of CDs. I'm not sure whether or not they were thematically linked, but a trilogy nonetheless.
Top Albums: 2011 | 2010 | 2009 || Tumblr | Twitter
PA
Music Blog.
Depths blog. (my band)
Beer Blog
Fort Bragg, CA
nj
technically they aren't on a label. epitaph just agreed to put out that album
Fort Bragg, CA
Ahh. That makes more sense. Thanks!