Blog: Buzz Bands

Perhaps the only album in recent years to approximate the meditative poesy of the National is "Tamer Animals," the new album from Other Lives . Where the National's haunting melancholy carries the aura of urban noir, the Stillwater, Okla., quintet operates on more pastoral topography, its lush orchestrations suggesting songwriter Jesse Tabish has frozen a moment in nature to inventory every fragile life. It's powerful stuff, from the tempered vocal harmonies, to Jenny Hsu's mournful cello, to the washes of organ and piano from Josh Onstott and Jonathan Mooney. The album, out this week on TBD Records , [...]