Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 08:51:40 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Animals That Swim Reform

Started by 23 Daves, March 20, 2011, 01:54:32 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

23 Daves

I realise this is likely to be of very little interest to most of you, but Animals That Swim are releasing a new single next week (or are they?) - their first in ten years by my reckoning.  There's a blog counting down the event here: http://animalsthatswim.wordpress.com/

It's difficult to summarise why the band matter so much to me in a few choice words, so why not use some old ones from way back when I first mentioned them on-forum regarding the album "I Was The King, I Really Was The King"?:

QuoteThe real tour-de-force, however, came with the follow up album "I Was The King, I Really Was The King". Housed in a sleeve showing a decrepit man in late middle age stripped to the waist and posing proudly, the artwork and title may or may not have been a comment on judging on surface values. Whatever, the first track off the bat, "Faded Glamour", is the band's finest moment. An exemplary and anthemic track celebrating small town England, it is in concept somewhere between Morrissey's "Everyday is Like Sunday" and the Go Betweens "Streets Of Your Town", except it's far better than either of those tracks. Yes, really. Whereas both those singles sneered, savaged and sighed at the nowheresvilles of the world, and showed them to be beyond redemption or praise, the Animals That Swim track is about being held by the magnetic force of the history and the very aura of the places. "There's been markets, garbage riots, maydays and meteors in the street" sings Hank, "But today it's just a place where we meet". The chorus soars in with a slightly sneering "This faded glamour is a stupid art school idea", but by the time the song is halfway through the lyrics and melody shift irrepressibly upwards, and he instead begins celebrating the place. The melody builds and builds until it can take no more, then drops out with a whimper. It's marvellous, drenched in an almost Celtic melancholy, and like most of the rest of the album, finds lyrical beauty in the unexpected, and things to celebrate in the most mundane and depressing of subject matters. Somewhere along the way, it also manages to be a superb pop song as well. "East St O Neill" is another such track. Beginning with the slightly doom-laden lines "Someone gone shot dead round here/ People left flowers/ by the Ribena stains on the pavement", the lyrics eventually take bizarre twists and turns as Hank Starrs tells us of how he stole the flowers, took them home in a wheelbarrow and pressed them all flat in a book. "On wet days the ghost sits in the kitchen leafing through it", he tells us, "and he's not grey or wraith-like/ but bright and solid like a new bike". The very fact that the song ends with Hank Starrs complaining about his unwanted spectral flatmates habits ("plays the radio too loud/ and makes a damn mess of fag butts and tea leaves") makes it one of the oddest but most ingenious lyrical twists ever – from death by gunshot to complaints about paranormal tidiness issues in under three minutes. On paper it sounds preposterous, but on record it's a wonderful treat.

Then of course there are the London songs, which are busy, bold and brassy, celebrating the characters and places ("London Bridge") and the thrift store East End ("Near The Moon") with an optimism that's almost unrealistic. When I was in Australia, these songs made me feel homesick. Now I'm back home, the strange thing is they still do. They seem to represent a London that only exists at the height of drunkenness, when night bus strangers actually talk to each other and reveal their grouches and tall tales. It's a place that doesn't exist all the time.
In terms of pop suss and melody, the album isn't lacking either. "The Longest Road" contains a swish, almost eighties melody, complete with a one-note, rhythmic, car horn imitating trumpet parp. Keyboards whoosh and glide in a somnambulant manner around a travel weary lyrical theme.

So why did no sod buy the album then? Well, in keeping with their shambolic ways, the band lost one manager at this point then never seemed to quite get around to getting another. As a result, they were left to flounder through the music industry on their own drunken arses, trying to push the idea of pop songs with subtle and awkward lyrics on to a knees-up Britpop country (as it was then). And this brings us on to perhaps the most crucial point, that being they were never around at quite the right time. At the arse end of grunge they seemed fey, overly arty and ridiculous, and at the height of Britpop far too knowing and awkward (and not especially "pretty", starry or presentable either). Jolly pop songs about rolling with it and businessmen in Country Houses were one thing, but similarly jolly pop songs about entrapment in scuffed up small towns and being shot dead and haunting someone's kitchen were quite another. It's not too shocking that the mainstream public cocked a snook at such behaviour.

Nonetheless, for a very dedicated minority of us Animals That Swim produced some wondrous songs, up there with the finest work of the period. And besides, I'd like to believe that if "Faded Glamour" became the new English national anthem, deep down it wouldn't just be me that would think it a marvellous idea. Here's your chance to decide for yourself.

This isn't an event which is going to get them on the front cover of "Mojo", and in fact even in the blogosphere I haven't seen a very big deal being made of this so far.  But if enough people sit up and pay attention, perhaps there will be more stuff from them after this. 

Here, in the meantime, is the video to the fantastic single "Faded Glamour", for me one of the finer releases of the nineties:

Animals That Swim - Faded Glamour

23 Daves

Hmmm... this was greeted with such a large silence that I strongly doubt anyone is interested!  But just in case you are, the single "Silver Rays/ Tiny Lucifer" has been issued on iTunes now, and can be found here:  http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/silver-rays-tiny-lucifer-single/id434372412

Very acoustic and threadbare compared to their other material, I'm not quite sure what to make of it just yet, but it sounds as if it may grow on me considerably. 

El Unicornio, mang

I might check this out. Not heard their album but 'Faded Glamour' is a brilliant song, totally stood out in the Britpop era and still sounds really good and fresh now.

23 Daves

There's an interview with the band here now as well:  http://finestkiss.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/back-from-their-distant-star-an-interview-with-animals-that-swim/

El Unicornio - the album "I Was The King" should probably be your first stopping point if "Faded Glamour" is all you're aware of.  It's an absolute masterpiece. 

El Unicornio, mang

Thanks, I'll definitely check it out. I do recall 'Faded Glamour' was featured on the Chart Show when it came out, I remember one of the little factoids was about Damon Albarn being a big fan. Think it got quite a lot of airplay on late night radio 1 too.