Glass Animals focus is on others on terrific new CD
“Six String Stories” is her first studio album in 14 years, but thousands of gigs in the interim have only enriched Chicago-based Joanna Connor’s fierce guitar skills and expressive, bluesy vocals.
Written mostly with longtime bandmate Marion Lance Lewis, Connor goes from blues to rock to near-gospel and back in a striking mix.
The time off to raise a daughter has sharpened Connor’s songwriting while also enhancing her dynamic range – the powerful drive of her earlier work remains but some tracks take it down a notch or two and provide breathing room.
“It’s A Woman’s Way” kicks off the album with a distinct female perspective, but Connor’s solos erase any gender bias. Her cover of Jill Scott’s “Golden” is more relaxed but just as passionate as the original, while also referencing Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City.”
“Heaven” starts with rolling percussion like Joni Mitchell’s “Dreamland” but then builds a tower of a song with sinuous acoustic guitar lines, a horn section, Bonnie Raitt-like vocals, a trumpet solo and a passionate sermon.
Instrumental “Halsted Street” purrs like medium-paced acoustic Al Di Meola until a brief drum solo paves the way for fretboard frenzy, and Connor shreds any preconceptions you may harbor about a woman who describes herself as looking “like somebody’s mom.”
- Pablo Gorondi
Associated Press
For their ambitious sophomore album, members of the indie-electronic band Glass Animals got some creative help from an unlikely source: total strangers.
Each song on the terrific “How to Be a Human Being” is told from the perspective of someone inspired by a person the band encountered on the road, from taxi drivers to fans. The result is a complex, exciting tapestry of a CD which switches musical styles and reveals new things each time t’s played.
The foursome, hailing from the southern England city of Oxford, had a breakthrough with the 2014 album “Zaba,” which featured the band’s melding of ’90s R&B and deft electronic touches. This time, they’re mature, layered – and hypnotic.
From the orchestral swell of “Mama’s Gun” to the tropical percussions of “Life Itself” and the video game loops in “Season 2 Episode 3,” Glass Animals make each of their 11 songs as individual as the 11 folk pictured on the album cover, like a dysfunctional family portrait.
The lyrics profile people who can’t get off the couch, who hear voices, who use drugs and whose general reality never matches their dreams. They’re regretful, sometimes arrogant and often clueless. But a deep well of empathy runs through the album.
Singer Dave Bayley can be funny – “My girl eats mayonnaise from a jar while she’s getting blazed” – to deep, as in: “Guess life is long when soaked in sadness.” He also has the terrific spoken-word rant “Premade Sandwiches” about over-commercialization of food.
Strangers don’t usually help spark such good stuff, but Glass Animals are clearly a special kind of band. Our advice: Don’t be a stranger.
- Mark Kennedy
Associated Press