Other Lives - Visions of chamber pop

The story of Jesse Tabish's various incarnations within a band is the story of every artist and every musician. Shaping the world into a musical imprint, reducing and synthesizing it, freeze-drying it into a concept, peering at it through the peephole of one's own conscious and subconscious mind, and then magnifying it into a universal vision, through music.

It all seems extremely easy, and yet behind the success of Other Lives — now hailed from many quarters, Thom Yorke among them, and already singled out among the early revelations of major festivals like Barcelona's Primavera Sound — lies a path of sonic identity and musical voice built up little by little, through a delicate balance between introspection and unconditional openness, between fine chiseling and creative impulse.

Before Other Lives, however, came Kunek, the band in which the members of the later group first came together, except for Eric Kiner, who would leave not long after the release of their first and only album.

On their debut, which went almost entirely unnoticed, Tabish and co. try to redefine the contours of the "minor-key pop" of 90s Radiohead and Coldplay, expanding its boundaries into chamber-music landscapes and prog visions of gaseous planets and desolate oceans of sand. Flight Of The Flynns is, in this sense, a surprising and thoroughly unusual record compared to the scene around it; it's clearly the work of a fervid author, perhaps one of the most important songwriters, but above all one of the most important "music-makers" in contemporary music: Jesse Tabish.

With a powerful sense of the cinematic and of musical drama, Tabish sketches out worlds of overflowing lyricism, drawing on even contradictory influences, from the folk inflections of "Bright Eyes" to the post-rock of "The Swell". The solitary harmonica stroll along the harbor front of "All Together", a brilliant Beatles-esque reinterpretation built on Neil Young-style passages, then gives way to the pianistic spirals of "Oh Noble Eric", a postmodern portrait of suburban greyness, reignited and transfigured by sudden portals into other dimensions.

The sense of an unstoppable musical flow, spreading without interruption from one song to the next, is an unavoidable impression throughout Flight Of The Flynns, even though no song ever feels the same as another. It's a narrative made of echoes and plot twists, with seemingly insurmountable peaks of violence and desolation alongside moments of extreme tenderness, as in the exemplary "Fast Asleep", where dream slips into nightmare without a break in continuity.

Flight Of The Flynns is, in short, a fractal record, in which every part reveals a figure of the whole, infinitely divisible yet infinitely distinguishable. Tabish's voice is reserved, barely rippled by the emotion that seeps through the arrangements, always refined yet powerful. When he whispers — on the closing "Good Day" — with wry wisdom: ⟦Q1⟧, you'd almost be tempted to believe him.

In Flight Of The Flynns, emotion and intellect coexist, in a kind of Leonardo-esque perfection where the brain's two hemispheres dance together, within a fragile set design of fire and ice, ready to come together and fall apart as needed. The ambiguity of dreams is the sum of the intrinsic ambiguities of thought and feeling, shifting and deceptive.

Jesse Tabish's music can be analyzed or simply surrendered to, yielding a pleasure that is equal but not identical either way. There's a voluptuousness in the record's pianistic flourishes that speaks of an authorial spirit only seemingly dormant, seemingly understated and concealed behind the clear supremacy of the Instrument, to which even the voice docilely submits.

The "other lives" of pop

After Kiner's departure, Kunek announced, in the impersonal and laconic tone that would become one of their trademarks, news that stirred up their small niche of Oklahoma fans: "We've decided to shake things up a bit. We have a new name, and we've completed the transition from Kunek to Other Lives. We recently finished our new record, the first under the name Other Lives, produced and recorded by Joey Waronker. Today we've posted two tracks from these sessions, 'End Of The Year' and 'Paper Cities'. [...] There will be more in the coming weeks."

The name Waronker alone — producer of Beck first and foremost, and later of Eels and Lisa Germano — would have been enough to prick up ears. Then there's the fact that the album was produced in-house by tbd, the label that distributes Radiohead in the United States. And Other Lives, their self-titled debut, doesn't disappoint expectations.

Everything disappears, in Other Lives. It crumbles, only to reappear in new form, like leaves lifted and reassembled by a gust of wind. A progressive-minded dynamism steeped in atmospheres of refined, even courageous sonic traditionalism (acoustic guitar, piano, bass, cello and drums), at the same time admirably produced and arranged. Even with aspirations, if not to classical composition (or rather its modern equivalent, somewhere in the vicinity of Arvo Pärt and Jóhann Jóhannsson), then at least to the airiness of a Hollywood cinematic epic (“Matador”).

The debut album by this Oklahoma band couldn't have arrived at a better moment, that is, just as the American scene (alt-folk in particular) seems to be taking on an unexpected pallor, in a genuine backlash of inspiration. One that strikes leading names and emerging artists alike.

An album, Other Lives, that ultimately doesn't live on captivating sounds, nor on melodic originality. Nevertheless, with its crystalline, solidly orchestrated amalgam, it quietly worms its way into remote corners of memory, so much so that what lingers isn't a song, an instrument, a line: what remains is the music itself. As mentioned regarding the production: two notable figures flank this budding band, namely the aforementioned Joey Waronker and Darrell Thorp. The latter handled the engineering of Beck's own “Sea Change” and Radiohead's “Hail To The Thief”. Consequently, the Other Lives album undoubtedly betrays a certain ambition toward the “big leagues”, but without ever compromising its solid musical proposition.

Specifically, what brings frontman Jesse Tabish's voice close to Yorke's is the creeping in of a similarly timeless anguish, though softened here through liberating compositions. The same composed melancholy, the same lulling nostalgia expressed by the notes of “The Trials Of Van Occupanther” by Midlake, the so-called Texan Radiohead.

The trace of the languid, mellifluous sway of “Sea Change”, however, finds an immediate counterpart in this album, in the timeless cleanliness of its still, pastoral scenery. Our band goes further, though, overcoming through the exuberance of its form - often in three-quarter time - certain fixations and clichés that instead characterize its illustrious predecessor. An exuberance that manifests itself by sketching the aforementioned prog references, through flashes of Yes-style pianistic flourishes (“E Minor”, “AM Theme”). It's clear, however, that Other Lives' intent is “landscape-oriented” rather than musically experimental: this is borne out by the scenes of spacious solitude in “Black Tables”, swollen with yearning. The emotional crescendo makes it no sacrilege to put it forward as a new “Epitaph” (from King Crimson's “In The Court Of The Crimson King”), with all due caveats.

This is because the deep soul of Other Lives is that of a record of simple, sweet intimacy, even if at times elusive in its progression (“End Of The Year”, which indeed closes with a tempo change). In this it strongly recalls the innocence of the youthful spleen of “Parachutes”, Coldplay's debut, an album Our band also nods to in certain details, as in the britpop of “Don't Let Them”. Although the melodic instinct is admittedly not quite the same, the epic breadth lent by the airiness of these waltzes - as vigorous and intangible as the wind - does not leave Our band looking out of their depth.

The path taken by Other Lives still presents several complications and open questions, however: their debut seems to sit on the border between worlds with a stormy relationship, in that kind of restless limbo separating the so-called alternative world from the one with wider reach. Their classicism isn't elaborate or up-to-date enough for some, while the progression of their pieces is too complex and composed for others. More substantially, some may grow weary of the repeated recourse to the three-quarter-time ballad, even though it allows for pianistic openings of great sweep (“Speed Tape”, “E Minor”), as well as choruses of considerable emotional intensity (“It Was The Night”, “How Could This Be?”).

The definitive (and hard-won) assertion of a musical identity

Solitary motion in the wake of an avalanche

(from “Tamer Animals”)

There is an inexplicable violence that sometimes rises from the notes of Tamer Animals (2011). An album that makes no attempt to reason, that doesn't try to trace the movements of the sandstorms of Oklahoma - their home turf - back to the physical laws of turbulence and particulate transport. Purely contemplative, the Other Lives ritual unfolds following subtle ripples of themes, of piano and guitar, at times almost obsessive, evoking long nights of Reason through the rejection of musical structures and conventions.

This is the scope of the second album by the Stillwater band, who, after the relative success of their debut, return via Tbd with a record honed over a full sixteen months of tireless work, song after song piled up as in the gradual construction of a Gothic spire.

It's truly striking that Other Lives chose to throw themselves body and soul into building a record even more radical than its predecessor, which had nonetheless featured several clearly recognizable pop songs, albeit stretched and expanded by the band's “orchestral” streak. No scare quotes needed for this Tamer Animals, which, right from the opening duet of winds and strings (the interweaving dance is sheer genius) in “Dark Horse”, betrays Jesse Tabish's obsession - he being the group's main songwriter - with the music of Philip Glass, whom some will already have recognized in the passage quoted above and will enjoy tracing throughout the record, in one form or another. There's naturally no shortage of more Morricone-esque tracks, “Old Statues” and “Desert” above all (with Joey Waronker, Beck's drummer, once again putting his experience to use in the record's vibrant, spacious percussive framework).

They confirm once again, if proof were needed, the necessity for a certain independent music scene to claim a certain freedom of expression (“As I Lay My Head Down”), managing in this way to defeat both the fundamentalism of the melodic “product” and the now-outdated aesthetic of lo-fi at all costs. No longer seeking the material and spiritual retreat of one's own bedroom, but, even amid forced (or not) isolation from everyday means, attempting to sketch out, through one's own vision, the world or a part of it. This is how the powerful ralenti of “Dustbowl III” comes to be, in which natural forces unleash themselves in a progression recalling the more instrumental, cinematic songs of Kunek, Other Lives' previous identity, discontinued after the sole release Flight Of The Flynns.

It should be said, to avoid any misunderstanding: it's not that the songs on Tamer Animals fail to meet more “classic” classification criteria. They simply sidestep them, setting into “For 12” the etherealness of a Bon Iver alongside a construction somewhat in the vein of Fleet Foxes, before charging back with the monolithic melody of the title track, an eternal pianistic impasse, strained to breaking point right up to its abrupt final cutoff. Even in the tracks most laden with orchestration (“Woodwind Loop” or “Landforms”) everything sounds natural and never overdone, despite the interweaving of flute, horns, violins, and the importance of the drumming contribution.

Tamer Animals slips away and wins you over: in this endless guerrilla war of sensations, what ultimately emerges is Tabish's and Other Lives' palpable urge to translate into music everything that is great.

After repeated, triumphant headline tours and one stint supporting Radiohead, Mind The Gap (2012) closes out an exceptional period for Other Lives, one that projected them towards mainstream horizons, independent or otherwise, condensing their live work and hinting - without overdoing it - at possible "evolutions" of their questioning sound.

The first and perhaps most feared of these hints lies in the loss of that kinetic physicality, that existential fury which marked the rhythms and urgent vocal lines of Tamer Animals, in favor of a more generic and intangible electronic shimmer, a fogging of sensation that reaches its fullest expression in the synth-dream nursery rhyme of "Dead Can".

In short, it seems (and neither Thom Yorke's remix of "Tamer Animals", released as Atmos For Peace, nor the other new track, "Dust Bowl", a natural b-side, do much to contradict this impression) that Jesse Tabish's eagerness to explore and change is becoming tangled up with the fear of "not doing enough" for the audience, both on stage and on record. Rather than "new" songs, one can only hope Other Lives turn up with what they've always been good at: beautiful songs.

An album like Rituals (2015) doesn't come as a surprise: the band's trajectory, right from their debut as Kunek, pointed towards an ever-greater focus on "experimentation" and texture at the expense of songwriting. That balance held up through last year's Tamer Animals, but as the band's popularity grew, not least following their tour supporting Radiohead (who heavily influenced their latest evolution), it was clear there'd be no turning back.

After Mind The Gap it was already fairly clear where Jesse Tabish and co. were headed, and sure enough "Reconfiguration", the lead single, arrives in all its "conceptual" aridity and inescapable substantive poverty, its songwriting picked clean from the remains of Tamer Animals and dressed up with a few purely decorative robotic-alien textures.

"Easy Way Out" sounds just as inert and bloodless, its inner epic unfolding mechanically, without the surges that had always defined them. Across the album's long runtime (fourteen tracks for about fifty minutes of music) there's room for a bit of everything, and the casual listener will no doubt enjoy the evocative gothic-western backdrop of "Need A Line", the electronic flickers of "Pattern" (which mostly recall an "interrupted" version of latter-day Coldplay), and the anxious chamber arrangements of "New Fog".

The hardest task remains finding a soul beneath the compositions of Rituals, for now just an abstractly solipsistic delirium: still, a return to form like "English Summer" shows that not everything is lost.

Five years on from that mysterious object called Rituals, the band retraces its steps with a fourth album more in tune with its original intentions: For Their Love. Here, though, the band's indie-rock sees the chamber-music approach of their early records swell up, reaching for epic tones through arrangements with a cinematic grandeur. Alongside the usual Morricone, referenced pretty much everywhere ("Lost Day", "Who's Gonna Love Us", but above all the western sweep of "We Wait"), there's also Ry Cooder ("Sideways") and even Danny Elfman, whose touch comes to mind amid the enchanted atmospheres of "Dead Language" and the childlike choirs of "Nites Out".

As usual, Jesse Tabish's delivery is highly emphatic, whether in the more intimate, halting moments ("Sideways", sung as if he were the brooding crooner of some jazz dive in a noir film) or in the epic, solemn ones ("Cops", which at times becomes cloying under its own weight, and "Lost Day"). Always precise and rich, often baroque, the band's contribution lends the songs depth and detail, bailing them out whenever the frontman's songwriting grows a little hazy.

Jess and Kim then take a break and set off on a journey through Europe, documented on record by "Sicily Session", recorded in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily. Recorded in a former church converted into a museum, V not only marks the band's return to their hometown, Stillwater, but is also, for the band, the first chapter of a creative reload. Thanks to a broader orchestral structure and lush chamber-folk textures, the new album steps gingerly into symphonic pop-rock with a sequence of melodies as lofty as they are dramatic and melancholic. At the root of these ten new tracks there are still traces of folk and post-rock, but the rhythm section doesn't stay in the background - if anything, it pushes forward and frays the almost cinematic orchestral grandeur. Patrick Conlon's arrangements and the presence of Christina Giacona's accordion (Conlon's wife) heighten the romanticism of the compositions; the swirl of strings, horns, voices, piano and percussion on "Mystic" is, in this sense, a powerful statement of intent. Other Lives put their rarefied, experimental sound to good use within a sturdier song format, hinting at an album that escapes the stifling provincialism of much American music without giving up its roots, matching in this respect the achievements of bands like Mercury Rev and Grandaddy.

In just over 31 minutes, the Stillwater band bring together the otherworldly and the real, with a narrative that reconciles beauty and dismay, rediscovering drive and inspiration.

Contributions by Michele Corrado ("For Their Love"), Gianfranco Marmoro ("V")

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google