Earlier this month, Brisbane
Australia’s Fragile Animals released
this wonderful long awaited six song EP.
I say long awaited because I’ve been listening to their 2023 debut album
Slow Motion Burial in my car all
summer so far. That album is so big and
bright and exciting that the anticipation for more has been off the charts.
Their music is incredibly polished and they sound like a veteran band,
though their first release was, I believe, in 2017. I suppose that makes them fairly veteran,
please excuse my old age, where years feel like months. My first conscious exposure to Fragile
Animals was with their 2019 “Waiting” single.
They remind me a band I would’ve flipped over in the early 90s, as they
utilize the LOUD-quiet-LOUD technique of song dynamics, and find a remarkable
balance of edginess and tension versus clarity, anthemic hooks, and catchiness. The massive album closer “Breathe Out and In”
from Slow Motion Burial could’ve fit
seamlessly next to 90s bands like cranberries,
Belly, Radiohead, Whipping Boy
and the like on a really good alternative radio station or mix-tape.
First of all, Tourist, is so perfectly recorded and mixed that it sounds amazing
on any kind of audio player at any volume.
Every instrument is crystal clear and vibrant and balanced. And speaking of that fictional 90s
alternative radio station, Fragile Animals would sound especially dramatic on a
high watt FM broadcast! It’s difficult
for me to imagine that a band this put together is only a minor known blip in
the vast sea of independent artists. They
write sturdy timeless songs that can easily match or exceed a lot of better
known bands. Their music NEEDS to be
heard and shared.
The first single, “Worldview,” from Tourist is actually an older track from
their 2019 EP, the ambitiously titled Only
Shallow/Only More. The urgency of “Worldview”
is palpable, as the persistent beat pulses together with a mid-range
bass-line. While the searing guitars bring
the dissonance. Victoria Jenkins sings about wanting to understand the
picture. The good and the bad or
indifferent sides of humanity – not the curated glimpses of some random
viewpoint of an organization or government.
Or even from an individual standpoint of social media, where people only
posts their good moments, for example.
Fragile Animals "Worldview"
There’s a pretty consistent theme
throughout touching on uncertainty caused by the sheer amount of us out there,
and not knowing what do believe, which can lead to isolation, and more
uncertainty or less understanding. The
opening “People I’ll Never Know” is a minute of quiet music and reflection
whose lyrics read like someone being so overwhelmed that they can no longer go
on. The title track is a glorious
chiming dose of excellent dreampop which finds us looking for a partner, yet
unsure of our instincts in recognizing what’s real and what’s not. The dramatic cymbal crashes throughout make
me wonder how they didn’t shatter or stay upright. “Sending Flares” is another tale about
seeking connection, but the sing-along chorus (“freezing to the bone”) reveals
the truth that one can still feel alone whether with someone or not.
The second half begins with “Into It”
A downtempo reflection lamenting the loss of innocence and how jaded we become
as we get exposed to hate and the ugliness of the world. The crushing finale is “Allergic,” which
tells the conflicting emotions of possibly being a caretaker of a loved
one. Feeling lost. Feeling claustrophic. Nowhere to turn. “I can’t change it!” The music is again urgent, intense, and kind
of perfect.
When I mentioned above about hearing
songs like these on broadcast radio, I realize that’s a dated concept. Most people no longer listen to the
radio. Yet I lament that bands with such
extremely palatable music like this one and last year’s Attic Ocean EP, or the brand new Bleach Lab EP should be relegated to the deep underground. It’s a crime if you ask me. Fragile Animals are continuing to improve with
each release, and that’s an unbelievably difficult feat. Hoping there’s new LP on its way soon. I cannot recommend this enough!
London band These Sleeping Hands released their debut album Only When I Sleep a month a ago and it
quickly became a favorite, but it was a surprise.I first heard their song “Starfall” via
streaming radio stationDKFM (DJ Amber Crain specifically) and I
really liked it.To me, in that blind
moment, it had a classic dream pop sound.I liked it enough to briefly peruse each song on the album via their Bandcamp page.It all sounded good, so I purchased the
download.However, once I actually took
the time to give the album a close listen, it didn’t sound much like the early
impression I had.
“Starfall” is a bright, shiny, catchy
pop tune, but not in the way I first believed.It’s also heavy and dense.The
bass guitar rumbles and a thick fuzz moves the song from verse to chorus with
intensity and purpose.The vocals are
buried in this mix and become more of an atmospheric and melodic element, yet
it’s done in a way that feels exactly right.I’m not sure what I first heard before in those early
introductions.Instead of the sweet
candy tunes of say early Lush that I
imagined, These Sleeping Hands have a lot more in common with Slow Crush without the heavy metal-isms.I would be happy with either direction.It’s a mystery at how much I mischaracterized
them, but it goes to show how easy how easy it is to misjudge a band or artist
by rushing through and not really listening.
“Puddles” is far from a pop tune with
its dark crawling sound that hints at Slowdive
with its broken air compressor sound and comforting warmth.It kind of reminds me of the peace within
noise from Sonic Youth’s
“Providence.”There are three
instrumental tracks here too.The
opening “Longing & Aching” is simply a wash of sound that intensifies for
its minute of duration.However, “Can’t
Stop Now Kid” and “Blissful” are huge triumphs and highlights.The best rock instrumentals have heavy doses
of dramatics and dynamics to insure that we don’t miss the vocals and these two
both bring those in spades.“Can’t Stop
Now Kid” highlights some amazing heavily reverbed almost bluesy e-bowed guitar
passes on top of restless rises and falls of the unrelenting rhythm section,
while “Blissful” comes in with an epic darkness and builds momentum as its
trudging roar slowly increases in volume and density.Both of these songs provide wonderful visuals
for the mind to get lost in.
The LP’s heart lies from “Ruby Had a
Mirror” (track three) to “Beyond” (track six).“Ruby Had a Mirror” has a melancholic unchanging kind of vibe with
unusual feedback howls painting an abstract journey through the song.Then “Starfall” comes in with its soaring
majesty, followed by the stellar “Can’t Stop Now Kid,” which reminds me of one
of my all-time favorite rock instrumentals “Awesome Sky” by postpunk band Moving Targets, and then lastly, is
“Beyond,” which might be the most shoegazey with its Labradford like haze of drone, the burbling bassline, and beautiful
vocals giving the song its melodic direction.Every song is great here.I love
the twin songs “Nighthawks” and “Broken
Hearts Club” that bookend what would be side two providing a unity to the proceedings.
Although I appreciate the brevity of
these songs, many of them beg for more space.Grander finishes.To me, “Beyond”
could go on forever, and there are other moments that feel like they end a bit
abruptly.This is a minor issue
though.When I said before that this
album was not like what I imagined, it was a pleasant surprise.I think that it has a stronger impact than
what my initial impression was.This is
definitely worth one’s time and hopefully a band to follow in the future!
The year was 1986. Having typed that, I immediately envision
myself wearing an Abraham Lincoln
get up and holding a book in the crutch of my arm tightly to my chest. Some details are hazy, but at the time, I was
really getting into music, but still mostly relying on Commercial Hit Radio for
my music discoveries. I was beginning to
seek more into the nooks and crannies that year, yet some hit songs poked
through. Some of my friends and I all
liked the moderate hit song “The Honeythief” by Scottish group Hipsway. I liked the groovy guitar and it was fun to
sing along with, despite the creepy Lolita-esque
lyrics. I wound up purchasing the 12”
single, while my friend Matt bought the full album on cassette. He liked it and loaned it to me, espousing
the song “Long White Car.” I agreed it
was a good song and that the album was alright.
I honestly only remember “The Honeythief” at this point, which was
they’re only hit US single.
The Portland hit radio station Z100 began advertising a concert for
Hipsway in town, where their sponsorship provided really cheap tickets. A bunch of us secured tickets and all piled
into Matt’s father’s van (none of us kids could drive yet) and he drove us from
the Oregon coast to Portland for a day of downtown hijinks and a late evening
concert. In retrospect, I do not know
how our parents put up with this crap:
trucking us morons around for these long distance trips to concerts, yet
I am thankful they did. The concert was
at The Starry Night club off of NW
Burnside. It is now The Roseland Theatre and remains essentially the same, except now
there’s a different entrance full of insane security measures. Then, one only needed to show a ticket (pre-barcode)
to get in the door and walk up those stairs to the second floor into the smoky
venue. An old square venue where the all
ages dancefloor fronted the stage, while above was a balcony for the 21+ crowd. All being fairly new to the live music
experience most of us bolted to the front of the stage eager to see the bands
perform. Bill split off to bum smokes.
The tenuous reason why I am relaying
this story is why this strange top 40 sanctioned show still stands out against
the hundreds of incredible bands I’ve seen over the years since. The crowd was so incredibly diverse and The
Starry Night was packed. Despite being a
Z100 event, the crowd was full of punks and goths – more in one place than I’ve
ever seen since, and I’ve seen a lot of punk and goth shows, which have both
been favorite sub-genres of mine. Of
course there were other teenage white generic nerds like us as well as poofed
hair teen girls in their finest shiny blouses buttoned all the way up with big
oval brooches. There were older looking
guys there who looked mean, like all record store employees at the time. The sheer amount of smoke in the venue was
astonishing. The sweet smell of cloves
was exotic and alluring.
My friend Ryan and I were at the
front of center stage as the opening act, Hypertension,
eased into position and the house lights turned off. Hypertension at that time were an 80s cover
band with some similarly styled originals, who seemed to be the house band for
Z100 events (where was the Z100 mascot: The
Jammin’ Salmon?). I don’t remember
much, except for the repeated in unison kicks the band would employ to
emphasize the songs and their party vibe.
Each time the kicks would happen, I would lean back to avoid a kick to
the face, and blinding lights above would like up the audience. As I fell back from the kicks, I would look
to my right and Ryan was also leaning back and looking back at me with his
hands still clutching the edge of stage.
He had a wide grin on his face that was more of a mystified confusion
than actual joy. Ryan remembers the singer wearing uncomfortably tight acid wash jeans, and that seems right.
Unlike the highly scheduled and
precise timing of so many concerts in these modern times, in the 80s and 90s
concerts ran on their own schedule. An
endless gap between bands back then were absolutely exhausting. At the stage, we could clearly see that
everything was set up, yet the waiting would go on for what seemed like
forever. Even by the time I became more
jaded and would seek out alcohol at the bar between sets, the gap was almost
too much to endure.
Again, my memories are fuzzy
regarding the actual show. Hipsway
played their set, surprisingly sans the 80s staple of a pair of soulful backing
singers. The quartet were dressed in
suits and played their smooth pop and of course, “The Honeythief” drew a huge
positive response from the crowd. What I
do remember is that the vocalist danced around in a fashion that had me
mesmerized: like a marionette puppet whose puppeteer was having a seizure. No that’s unfair, because his dance was
smooth and it fit his olive green suit wearing chic. More like an expertly wielded Jig Doll? That’s seriously all that I remember of the
performances. I know that I enjoyed them
and had a great time. It’s amazing how
my memories are more snapshots than actual reels of action.
Speaking of memories, I do not
remember what happened to the rest of our gang.
I knew that Bill was running amok bumming smokes and trying to “scam
chicks,” yet I do not remember if Ken and Matt were up front with us, or
not. I always suspected that Ken was in
some side room with old fashioned 30s movie style mobsters sniffing blow off of
a hooker’s bare stomach, but this cannot be confirmed. Plus in the days and weeks after he could
expertly mimic the Hipsway singer’s dance.
And Matt? Who knows? Probably ordering chili cheese fries from a
kitchen that no one knew existed. They
were probably right there with Ryan and I, but not nearly as confounded by
Hypertension as we were.
Once the show was over and the house
lights sprang back to life, I remember standing in the middle of the dancefloor
surrounded by all of the people filing their way to the exit stairwell. We were keeping an eye out for Bill, who
popped out of the crowd excitedly shouting at us about all the cool people he
had met and the babes who gave him smokes.
This was when I really began to notice the diversity of the
audience. Being Portland, yes, the
audience was mostly white, but not exclusively.
It was also gender diverse. Not
until the early 2000s did I see I see so many women at concerts. The “alternative” 90s shows had become
testosterone fueled hell pits.
It didn’t fully dawn on me until much
later, but this Hipsway concert was one of the last times that I attended a
concert that drew such a wide swath of people of all kinds of backgrounds happily
co-existing. I’ve always wondered why
that was. I’m still not sure, but I
think it may be because of the changes in media options, or just an unusual anomaly. We went from a society made up of
broadcasting options. That meant limited
options. So many of us had very few
choices, if say we wanted to hear some new music. We listened to one of the few radio stations
that played new music, so we would put up with hearing numerous songs that we
didn’t really care for in order to hear that one song that felt thrilling. Today, obviously, we all choose our own
playlists. We don’t have to listen to stuff we don’t like just to get to the stuff we
do. We can listen to only our good
stuff. I’m not judging this. I do this too. It’s remarkable. That fifteen year old kid would’ve never had
a notion that one day he could listen to a streaming radio station (DKFM) for an hour and only hear one
song that was just okay, while the rest are stunning! Who wouldn’t choose that over listening to an
hour full of commercials, boring ballads, and “Careless Whisper” by Wham! for the 70th time in a day?
What this has done though is it
has limited our exposure to very specific people and things. Not that all crowd diversity is gone, but
over the past two decades, I can predict the make-up of the audience before attending a show. One might experience more of that Hipsway
diversity at these giant stadium concerts, but I am so far down my own rabbit
hole that I didn’t consciously know a Taylor
Swift song until 2023, plus I can no longer afford concerts. Perhaps that alone is part of that Hipsway
audience back in 1986, it was cheap entertainment. It was a night out with something that we could all do. Most of us likely learned about it
from the same source.
I’m no expert in this kind of thing,
but as my old age nostalgia has ramped up lately and I ponder about times like
this random show from the 80s and marvel at seeing a group of Japanese coeds
excitedly leave that show together directly behind a few skate punks wearing DRI and CircleJerks T-Shirts
and a 30-something married couple holding hands (please forgive the
assumptions). Since about 1998, I’ve
been almost guaranteed to see some guy at a concert who could be me. It’s kind of creepy and never fails to make
me question my life choices.
Please don't mistake this as a "back in my day things were better" tirade. Again I'm not judging. Personally, some things then felt better, and many things are better now. Things are definitely different. That cannot be denied. Sometimes I wonder if our
individualized isolationism is why we still struggle so much with understanding
each other. I think as humans we crave
shared experiences, but not as much as we crave satisfying our own interests. Over recent years I’ve witnessed a lot of
excited conversations about certain TV shows on certain streaming
services. People who otherwise don’t
interact. I do not pay for streaming and
I can tell that people are disappointed, but get excited to tell me about the
show that is lighting up their days and nights.
Often times they offer me their login so I can watch said show and be
available for a rundown. The craving for
that shared experience is palpable and yet we’re finding more and more ways to
let it go. I’ve done zero research and
fully realize that I’m talking out of my ass, yet my experiences especially
since social media became such a thing is that I will likely not attend a live
concert ever again that will come anywhere close to the broad spectrum of
people that I used to witness regularly years ago. It’s nice to know now that when I see an
artist perform that most of the people there are, as a whole, much more likely
to be people I have a lot in common with.
However, it’s more forgettable.
Nearly forty years later I still remember Hypertension’s kicks and the
smell of cloves and seeing a couple of black kids dancing uninhibited to a mostly unknown
white band from far away.