A world dictated by flesh—the colors, shapes, and birth organs that assign markers of identity—is not one that most thinking people want. But it is reality, and despite recent strides at dismantling how bodies direct society, it remains worth contesting. The Wild Animals in My Life does this subtly, with poise. There is nothing didactic about this heavy dream pop record, but it doesn't take long to decipher Flesh World's outsider perspective. The band is lead by vocalist/guitarist Jess Scott, formerly of C86-indebted pop-noiseniks Brilliant Colors—who, alongside Veronica Falls and Allo Darlin', released some of the more memorable records of the contemporary Slumberland era. It was at the San Francisco HQ of long-running punk bible Maximum Rocknroll that Scott met guitarist-synthesist Scott Moore, of the essential queercore band Limp Wrist, known for pissed, purposeful outcast spirituals like "Punk Ass Queers" and "I Love Hardcore Boys/I Love Boys Hardcore".
Despite these seemingly disparate stylistic backgrounds, it's not surprising that Scott and Moore would come together. It seems rather inevitable that folks working in genres like hardcore and indie pop—where there are typically more sonic parameters, where things are tight, sped-up, compacted—would eventually want to free themselves and make impressionistic music like this. (As with 2013's self-titled EP, The Wild Animals in My Life is out on a small hardcore label, affirming their ties to that community.) Flesh World, now a punk-not-punk quartet, audibly revel in the newfound breathing space, tugging at the nuances of candied noise, brash '70s punk, and the gauze of shoegaze, fleshing out their emotional possibilities with disarming melodies. Scott's voice is patently, unconventionally gorgeous, more grave and poetic and goth than her sweet-pitched approach in Brilliant Colors, as if Nico joined a shoegaze band. In her old group, Scott once wrote a song about seeing Patti Smith ("Cult Face"), and here she joins the ranks of punk singers channeling the cool androgyny of Smith's expressive inflection into a DIY aesthetic.
On the tender, harsh, and searingly honest "Just to Tear Me Down", Scott sings, "I could hang myself out to dry/ From the storm of this fantasy/ Either way, you cut my faith," her syllables bleeding like watercolors, their tones ambiguous and beguiling. This vulnerability and strength plays out across Wild Animals in My Life, which hones on themes of alienation, blurred self-perception, and love that can swallow you whole, all with an uncanny calm. The sing-song title track almost starts with a lightness, before growing increasingly gloomy with each verse. Scott says the title was a National Geographic headline about a zookeeper, repurposed for the careless people around her: "I know they're ruthless and uncaged/ I know they're thrashing and untamed." You can hear them wear on her.
Wild Animals' music sometimes sounds likes it's moving in opposing directions all at once, like tectonic plates diverging. Former Brilliant Colors drummer Diane Anastasio brings a barebones rhythm section, recalling the minimalism of Moe Tucker or Bobby Gillespie on Psychocandy, underpinning the whole record with a hypnotic tension. The band only occasionally races off on an ethereal 1-2 punk blast, as on the penultimate "Your Love Is Like a House"; "Shaved Head", meanwhile, is a screeching tale of restless youth with a Sonic Youth sprawl. It all lends their music an alluringly monochrome, filmic quality.
Flesh World have indeed been more likely to name-check underground queer filmmakers like Kenneth Anger and Bruce LaBruce as influences than other bands. They have been vocal about their interests in the queer histories of art and literature, in paying homage and following the thread. The Wild Animals in My Life was recorded with Canadian punk pioneer Don Pyle (of Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, authors of the "Kids in the Hall" theme song) who is from Toronto, which seems fitting—it's the city where queercore launched with the publication of the legendary '80s zine J.D.s (co-founded by LaBruce). Were Flesh World born a few decades earlier, Wild Animals tracks like "Poolside Boys" or the dire, rocketfire "Strawberry Bomber" could have adorned one of *J.D.*s' "Homocore Hit Parade" pages.
Accordingly, Scott says she wrote "Poolside Boys", the record's most stunning track, after visiting an exhibit by 1960s pop artist David Hockney. She must have been staring down the vibrant, cerulean blues of his classic swimming pool paintings, the ones with nude men against modernist Southern California architecture, with so many implications of queer desire, like vintage visual love poems. Even without this context, "Poolside Boys" bursts wide open, washes of reverb, color, and light that glow more with the foil of their surrounding greys, and its sublime tones feel optimistic. Scott's words are simple—"I painted/ Something for David... Something beyond the brush/ Something I liked very much"—which makes it prettier, more mystical. Limp Wrist once said they put the "core" back in "queercore," and here, Flesh World puts the "dream" back in "dream pop," envisioning familiar sounds in a crucially different way. Square in the middle of a record that can be excessive, albeit endearing, in its dour veil is a moment of unrepentant brightness, beauty and hope.
