Our Brother The Native - Make amends for we are merely vessels [Fat Cat Records - 2008] | After the folk meets noise,meets bizarre sample charming yet chaotic debut from 2006 by this young American three piece. Here they return with a slightly more polished yet still chaotic second album which brings together a haphazard, often epic and soaring mix of post-rock, ambience and noisy/ emotional charged vocals. I guess the closet way to try and describe the sound of this is if The Animal collective went more soul searching and downbeat deciding to do a traumatised take on post-rock, drone craft and ambience it could well sound like this. The tracks often drift and bob in a sound air mix of guitar expansion, tinkling pianos, sampled female ohs and ahs, & all manner of samples that wrapping around you. Then it either drifts along in this strange soundworld or moves towards more structured post-rock that is often awkward, wavering and emotional charged. with the vocals going from mumbles that sound like a younger more geeky Robert Smith, or suddenly kick into noisy and emotional vocal & sound overloads. For most of the album it mangers to give a fresh and different take on the whole post-rock meets ambient thing- with only one or two tracks drifting towards more clichéd song writing and one track in particular sound a little like Sigur ros on a bad day. Quite how this will fit in with fans of the first album I’m rather unsaw because it’s a fairly drastic sound change- but if like me you've enjoyed their chaotic,often charming & always trying to be inventive take on music I’m sure this will go down just fine. So Let Our brother the native into your world with their often awkward yet ultimately very endearing take on sound. Roger Batty
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