John Parish has stuck five years of recordings on this record, and there's no single thread or tactic here except-- and this could just be the title-- it sounds like music about animals, or specifically, music for an animal documentary. I'm picturing one of those shows on PBS, with birds pecking around or turtles going at it. The music has elegance, though like those shows, it can be too staid or staged: it needs more violence, like a good alligator/hippo fight, or some cheetahs to chase the gazelles. Long story short: it's pleasant, but not always striking.
Parish first won me over in 1996 with the blues/noise music he wrote for PJ Harvey's psycho road lyrics on their joint album Dance Hall at Louse Point. That record was the raw edgy nerve next to Harvey's electronica and trip-hop phase, and its music was the highlight from her Is This Desire tour a few years back. Parish has since worked as a guitarist and producer for bands like the Eels, Giant Sand, and Goldfrapp, but this is only his second record under his own name, and he crams several projects into its thirteen tracks. The fact that it has any continuity is due partly to Parish's production-- which is unified and gorgeous-- but also to its prevailing mellowness: from Clare Mactaggart's solo violin on "Absolute Beauty Is an Absolute Curse", as slow and stately as a preening flamingo, to Pat Macdonald's loping, atmospheric harmonica on "El Merreon".
Several tracks feature Parish's big band, a dozen-strong ensemble with a brash sound centered on brass, Fender Rhodes, guitars and percussion. Parish takes the band through the soaring "Westward Airways", which could be the highlight of the album; but they're less successful on the title track and "The Florida Recount", which are loud and hammering-- the arrangements are less nuanced and the songs less enjoyable.
By contrast, the small-group tracks-- and solos like Parish's Fender Rhodes piece "Lord It's a Happy Land"-- are pretty, but they drift by like so many interludes. So it's refreshing to hear the songs that use vocalists, where Parish gives a looser and louder performance. On "Bernadette", the band rocks along beneath singer David Donahue's monologue with sharp guitar lines and a fleeter, less oppressive climax. That track's energy carries into the next song, "Spanish Girls", named for the young ladies whose singing-- captured on the beach with a cassette recorder-- haunts the melody and draws out Parish's rowdiest playing: this ain't no serenade. He also uses Donahue on "Stable Life", where the guitar effects and Aaron Dewey's shadow vocals turn a basic pop song into a shuffling, multi-layered piece.
The bulk of the album is so stately that the last track barely fits: Parish pulls in latter-day Captain Beefheart member Eric Drew Feldman (on "fake harmonica") and PJ Harvey on vocals, to cover "Airplane Blues", a textbook 12-bar blues with some fun innuendo: "First he turns me over, then he starts to loop-the-loop/ Takes a long time 'til his wings begin to droop." Harvey eats it alive, but it's so odd to hear Parish let his hair down this far that it feels like a throwaway encore.
And that last track demonstrates again that, although How Animals Move has solid arrangements and melodies, Parish is at his best when he mixes hard work and detail with spontaneous, rough-edged playing. It's not that the slow stuff doesn't work; it's just not as exciting or even as inventive as his rock music. If he can have so much fun behind singers, why does he get so studious on his own?
