Other Lives
Rituals
(TBD Records)
B-
Four years later, Tamer Animals feels monumental. It was special, yes, even as it first took hold, lifting Other Lives from local favorite into the national conversation. That pitch grew louder when Radiohead plucked the band out of its native Stillwater to play in front of tens of thousands a night, steadily converting more and more listeners to fans of their salute to dark and dusty, Prairie Gothic folk rock. Film and television took advantage of the cinematic catharsis of “For 12,” “Dust Bowl III” and the title track, and Oklahoma’s best-kept secret became anything but.
That sound — the climax of a Western, the heartbreaking fallout of a duel — could have been the backbone to a movement, but Other Lives (long ago known as Kunek) change the narrative with follow-up Rituals. Vertebrae of that world remain, albeit fossilized; the orchestrated, swelling sound is ever present, but the folkiest tendencies are pushed into a tertiary presence, digging at skittish, left-field electronic pop with a slicker, Kid A gloss. Time changes things. So, too, do lineup changes and a relocation up to the Pacific Northwest. And it wasn’t as though Other Lives should have felt shackled to the territory it had previously staked. It’s easy, however, to wonder if they left it too soon, in the midst of those choruses that don’t feel so singular.
Not to say this isn’t a striking listen — because it is. Jesse Tabish and Co. churn out blindingly beautiful melodies (“Pattern”) and arrangements (“2 Pyramids”) here, and there are many ways in which it plays as a suitable heir to Tamer Animals, particularly in a sort of reactionary fashion. Puddled, amorphously bleeding from song-to-song, Rituals all but becomes the glass of water chuting down a parched throat, green bulbs popping into frame out of an ocean of sepia. By extension, it’s a refreshing, lush sort of record, gorgeous tones spilling out of every turn, but that possessed thirst brought a vitality to every turn of Tamer Animals. It was a cagey creature, forever on the razor-sharp edge of lashing out. There was something special in that tension, one with which Other Lives still wrestle in choice entries (“Reconfiguration, “Beat Primal”) but sits at bay through most of Rituals’ duration. Ironically, it feels more domesticated now than then, even unleashed from the old aural terrain.
That unease was something of their signature, and that cut thread smears the border between the now-trio and the lovely but forgettable pool of lesser Shearwater, The Antlers and Midlake cuts in nondescript excursions (“No Trouble,” “It’s Not Magic”). The impression that Radiohead left is letterpressed into its sides, too (Atoms for Peace’s Joey Waronker co-produces), but it plays as a strength more so than a crutch. That’s never more apparent than it is in “Reconfiguration.” Tabish slithers for his best Thom Yorke impersonation, the typical downtrodden collective sounding downright cocky as it whirs its amber-hued music right past the present into a digitalized future. As a whole, its a crisper and lemon-scented production, though dust-lined pockets and dirt-caked boots grime it up here and there, specifically the sparsely spooky 4 a.m. anthem “Need a Line.”
Nomadic in a way, Rituals isn’t destination driven; it’s a wandering spirit with a settled Dustbowl in the rearview, indulgent with 14 borderless songs that alternatively sprint and drag. That speaks to Other Lives as a band, too, staring deep into that night sky to discover what it will be, knowing all too well what it was. That stargazing makes for steady aesthetic bliss, even if it’s not as consistently affecting. Those sharply focused moments of clarity, though, point to a future that still has plenty of bright days ahead.
