Honorable Mention #2: Braids - Native Speaker

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
So your vocals sound an awful lot like Animal Collective? So do dozens of other bands that released albums in 2011. What else you got?

In the case of the debut album by Braids, Native Speaker, the answer is to concoct an album of elliptical emotional resonance that contorts and contracts in upon itself, in an attempt to both answer and question the framework that our lives hang upon. And if that sounds a bit lofty, it is. Braids never shy away from grand emotional statements, but neither do many other bands. So what makes this particular album of hazy, swirling indie rock more deserving than any other album released this year? In part, it’s the small precise details that connect the larger sentiments that really allow this album to take hold in the listeners mind and allow us to filter our own memories through lead singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s particularly bracing and direct tales of emotional deconstruction. But to be honest, we’ve heard this all before. The pointed vocals, the unexpected jolting use of profanity, and the drone-ish worship of early Animal Collective all have been pilfered to some degree by countless bands. Braids, to their credit, pilfer a good deal better than most other bands. By using these ill-gotten gains in an effort to create rather than copy, they realize that the best homage to your heroes is to create better than you imitate. And while this album doesn’t hit the highs of past Animal Collective albums, the push and fervor is there in spades. Opener “Lemonade” begins as a hazy, free-floating apparition which slowly rises and falls and makes way for the release of Standell-Preston’s vocals and the disassembling of its’ own influences. This method of using and creatively abusing their influences extends across the rest of these tracks. Drawing from their immediate and not so immediate influences, Braids craft an album that bewilders--in a good way--as much as it rewards. And in this less-than-tangible world that the band creates across these 7 tracks, the fact that so much is left to the listener to understand is refreshing in a time when overstatement has become so much the usual.

Whoever heard of an Animal Collective cover band? Let me get back to you on that.

Tracklisting:

01. Lemonade (listen to the mp3 below)
02. Plath Heart
03. Glass Deers
04. Native Speaker
05. Lammicken
06. Same Mum
07. Little Hand