The Sound Of Animals Fighting – The Ocean and the Sun

I wanted to like this album. I really did. I appreciate what they’re trying to accomplish with the shunning of celebrity status and the refocus on the artistic aspect of the music, so, knowing full well that this style was outside the realm of my musical expertise, I hoped that I could write about the beauty of the music itself and the tracks as the individual pieces of art that they were intended to be.

I am not able to do so.

Granted, I’m sure fans of previous albums Tiger & The Duke and Lover, the Lord Has Left Us… will probably get their groove on and enjoy a nice respite from whatever Bjork or Mars Volta songs they’ve played out on their iPods, but this vibe wasn’t for me. I’m not stating that it was altogether bad, because for every detractor there was something positive that brought the track or album as a whole back up to a level of impressive musical competence.

Individually, there is talent on this album, but at times the elements don’t seem to blend as well as they may have conceptually. Not being a fan of progressive, artistic rock, however, I found little redemption in bizarre tracks like “Chinese New Year” (literally, a one minute sound byte from some Chinese New Year parade) and “Ahab” (a static-y mess of 61 seconds that gave me a headache) but more conventional (and I use that term loosely, of course) and marketable tracks that struck me were “Cellophane” and “On The Occasion Of Wet Snow”.

Given that the band itself features some pretty heavy-hitters from other punk and alt rock genres, I remain optimistic for the future of The Sound Of Animals Fighting. I’ll continue to keep my eyes and ears open in the hope that subsequent releases will demonstrate a more cohesive musical arrangement, or that perhaps one day my tastes will change.