Description
After 2013’s ‘Black Pudding’ this is Lanegan & Garwoord’s second album together. “Over the years, we’ve recorded together and apart. This time, I started this record alone, with many animals as company,” says Garwood. “It flowed, I set to work and out it came. Our music is instinct, there is not much talking about it, just creating. I think that if you are at peace with your work, and feeling it right, it flows, and can feel ‘easy’. Music isn't meant to be hard. Though sometimes it can burn you to ashes. Making music for a singer, so they can inhabit it with a song means hitting the right soul buttons. There is no hit without a miss. It is a healing record, for us the makers, and for the listeners. It grows natural. We are gardeners of sonic feelings.”
While ‘Black Pudding’ put Garwood’s 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 they’re straight out of Sly Stone’s ‘There’s 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 album’s most direct, most affecting track is the closing Desert Song. It’s 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. Here’s to many more of those sunrises... and to those midnight gatherings too.
