Description
The albums 12 songs are spectral and sinewy, often defined by the spaces in between the sounds. A ghosts whistle weaves itself around a pulsing single note on Lonesome Infidel; Feast To Famines hard luck story floats above a guitar part so strung out and washed with distortion its become barely recognisable. Its soul music for anyone whos long since left the crossroads.
Over the last decade, Mark Lanegan and Duke Garwood have worked in tangent on 2013s Black Pudding as well as on Lanegans solo records (Garwood contributed to 2012s Blues Funeral and 2017s Gargoyle after which he toured as part of Lanegans band). Writing and recording was split between studio collaboration and sharing music between Garwoods home in London and Lanegans in Los Angeles.
While Black Pudding put Garwoods mercurial guitar centre stage, With Animals is constructed from a different set of tools. Analogue and dust flecked, it sounds like Lanegan and Garwood have been holed up in a 60s recording studio while the apocalypse rages outside. Tracks sit on loops that sounds like theyre straight out of Theres A Riot Goin On while sparse melodies nod in the direction of British electronic producers like Burial or Boards Of Canada. Which is not to say it sounds like any of those things this is a weird world all of their own design.
The albums most direct, most affecting track is the closing Desert Song. Over two and a little more minutes of acoustics, Lanegan pleads the impossible: Please let me continue this dream / even though it cant be believed. Its as pure and spontaneous an ending to an album as one could hope for a catharsis of sorts and a piece of true alchemy created by two brilliantly singular talents. Heres to many more of those sunrises and to those midnight gatherings too.
LP pressed on 180g black vinyl with inner sleeve, black on silver foil and digital download code.
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