Bands brought up on a small-label ethos have historically clashed with their new owners after eventually signing to a major: The Replacements, Wilco and Neil Young to name a few. They find it difficult to adapt to their new label’s rigid demands, and after a confused attempt at an album, cite creative differences and leave disgruntled, ultimately settling back to where they were.
So, when Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s began to show discontent with their new home at Epic Records, no one expected the result to be anything out of the ordinary. Release dates were pushed back, fans became angry, riots ensued. Over time, the new Margot record seemed more of a hopeful idea than something concrete.
But in one of the stranger compromises reached between label and band, the music was released after all. It comes in two forms – the band-sanctioned Animal!, and the label-preferred Not Animal. The former is officially a vinyl-only release and the latter comes out digitally and through CD. Of the two simultaneous releases, only five songs are shared by both releases.
Luckily, these five tracks tend to carry the most intensity and gravitas of any of the 19 recorded songs. There’s “A Children’s Crusade on Acid,” with whooshing percussion and a chorus drenched with vocal “oohs.” Then there’s the standout – for more ways than one – “Hello Vagina,” an exquisitely sad, multi-instrument account of Heaven’s Gate cult members.
As well crafted as songs like those are, sometimes Margot’s ambitions and status as an octet overpower its songs, saturating the tracks needlessly with too many ideas. The joint track “Cold, Kind, and Lemon Eyes” presses on with a pair of call-and-response passages that needlessly build in intensity over their reiterations. While the idea is fine, layering strings, synth, arena-ready guitar riffs, reverb-heavy tom drums and quasi-epic bells over an acoustic guitar backbone is a bit too much for the ears to take.
It seems anywhere from most to all of the ideas present on the two-record set are good ideas, and they’re all executed well. But the way the tracks are put together, many of the songs have too much going on in a short time. The listener has no chance to take in a particularly affecting portion of a song because the next one takes its place so quickly.
When the band figures out how to restrain itself, the most rewarding tracks come to be. The largely acoustic ballad “Broadripple is Burning” from Not Animal is carried easily by Richard Edward’s emotional voice, which channels Sleeping at Last’s Ryan O’Neal at its most tender. The weeping-string exclusive “There’s Talk of Mine Shafts” from Animal! drifts dangerously close to stylization, but becomes a winner due to its straightforwardness and the beautiful vocal duet of Edwards and Emily Watkins.
Because the records only share five of the same songs, each one has its share of successes and missteps, and, strangely enough, for entirely different reasons. As fantastic as a track such as “There’s Talk of Mineshafts” is, others on Animal! such as “I Am a Lightning Rod” don’t do anything quite memorable enough to make much of an impression.
Certain songs on Not Animal, such as the synth-heavy “Real Naked Girls” and the naturally building final track “Hip Hip Hooray,” work well by not shooting out in a hundred directions at once. Conversely, tracks like the oddly hard-rocking “Shivers (I Got ‘Em)” seem out of place and unfocused.
Overall, there’s really no way of determining if one of the records is particularly better, as both portray different attitudes and, of course, differing track lists. While Animal! is more of a continuation of The Dust of Retreat, mostly retaining the folky chamber pop the band is known for, Not Animal leans toward a heavy edge unexplored in the band’s past releases.
The former flows more smoothly, but the latter has enough surprises to make up for it. So neither record is really better than the other in the end. Think of it as 19 new songs by one of the more exciting octets out there, and you’re good to go.
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RATING: 3 out of 5 stars
