Introducing: Other Lives

The opening bars of Other Lives‘ debut album might, on first listen, seem misleading. Tamer Animals opens with horn pulses, the likes of which you might expect to hear in Music For 18 Musicians – not in a record that has been widely compared with Fleet Foxes.

Certainly, Other Lives demonstrate the same, slightly unnerving vocal even-handedness that characterises Bella Union’s finest. But a few minutes in and it becomes clear that Tamer Animals demonstrates an unusually fully-formed vision – and is evidence of a talent that defies simple comparison.

Whether it is the strange melodicism of ‘Old Statues’ or the Kid A-esque strings of standout ‘For 12′, Tamer Animals surprises and beguiles with each turn. The Line Of Best Fit spoke to the Stillwater band by email to find out about making widescreen music in a small Midwestern town.

Hello, Other Lives. The album sounds beautiful. Can you tell us a bit about the recording process? I understand you recorded it yourselves.

Early on in the making of the record we realized that recording the record would be synonymous with writing the record. We didn’t want to be restricted to a band format when writing the record so we went a little further and completely got rid of that format entirely. We went about each song disregarding what instruments we could play and instead thought about what instruments belonged. This made playing the song in the room impossible so instead we recorded each instrument one by one. Basically, we had to record the song before we knew if the idea would even work or not.

For British readers, tell us a bit about Stillwater. Is it as idyllic as the name suggests?

Probably not as much as it suggests but it’s definitely no thriving metropolis. It’s a small town with a large university so there’s always something to do but at the same time it’s easy to escape if you want to get work done.

Other Lives – For 12

The record has an acutely American, even Dust Bowl-esque feel to it. Other people have made comparisons with Morricone. How big a role do you think your environment has played in your music?

We have a strong connection to the landscape and the history of where we grew up. Around the time we started this record we were really drawn to the story and the imagery of the Dust Bowl and we wrote a few songs with that theme in mind.

Many of the arrangements sound like they might require rather more than five musicians. Did you specifically set out to make music on a large scale? Do you think there is the scope to grow Other Lives into a larger ensemble?

I don’t think we sought out to make music on a larger scale as much as we simply ignored any limitations concerning scale. We didn’t want to be practical on this record. That meant we really didn’t think or care about the fact that we would inevitably have to play it live.

Finally, can you recommend something we probably haven’t heard before?

Colourmusic (the pink album)