Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s - Animal!/Not Animal [rethought]

Animal?

1. A Children’s Crusade on Acid
2. Broadripple Is Burning
3. As Tall as Cliffs
4. My Baby (Shoots Her Mind Off)
5. Cold, Kind, and Lemon Eyes
6. Hip Hip Hooray
7. Love Song for a Schubas
Bartender
8. Holy Cow!
9. The Ocean (Is Bleeding Salt)
10. Hello Vagina
11. There’s Talk of Mine Shafts
12. Pages Written on a Wall

Here.



General Ratings:

Rating: 6*
Breadth of Appeal: 6
Consistency of Quality: 6

*by comparison, I’d probably give Animal! a 3 or 4, Not Animal a 5.

RIYL: Bright Eyes, Aimee Mann, Ryan Adams

Further Listening: Neva Dinova (especially the split Bright Eyes EP), Songs: Ohia/Jason Molina/Magnolia Electric Co., Josh Ritter

Siblings: Archer Avenue, Panic Attacks!, Pravada

Place of Origin: Indianapolis, IN

Instrument/Sounds List: Acoustic and Electric Guitars, Bass, Piano, Keyboard, Synths, Drums, Multi-tracked Vocals, Female Backup Vocals, Lap Steel, Violin, Cello, Trumpet, Harmonica, Toy Piano, Sleigh Bells

Mood Tones: Late night and lonely whiskey drinking.

Song Highlights: As Tall as Cliffs, There’s Talk of Mine Shafts, Broadripple Is Burning

Favorite Lyrics:

“If my woman was a fire, /
she’d burn out before I’d wake /
and be replaced by pints of whiskey, /
cigarettes, and outer space.” (from "Broadripple Is Burning")

“Oh god, deliver me /
from my enemies: /
these women in /
green winter coats, /
working for a tip /
don’t paint your lips.” (from "Cold, Kind, and Lemon Eyes")

“But the children lose their minds /
in such uncertain times.” (from "A Children’s Crusade on Acid")

Further Toughts:

Richard Edwards used to be in a band called Archer Avenue and named Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s after Gweneth Paltrow’s Margot “this is my adopted daughter” Tenenbaum (and supposedly George W. Bush’s pronunciation of “nuclear”). I love The Royal Tenenbaums as much as anyone, but come on. Not surprisingly then, MatNSaS’s are plagued by their own pretensions (and a grammatically inexplicable apostrophe). After stirring up some excitement with their 2006 debut The Dust of Retreat they signed with Epic and put out two versions of their 2008 album: Animal!, the band’s version, on vinyl and Not Animal, the label’s more listener-friendly one, on cd. Neither is particularly good, though there is a pretty good album lurking between them. The band's favored version of the album is pretty well unlistenable, mired in self-importance, navel-gazing, and performed despair, its best moments brief and buried in dirge. Epic did them a huge favor by saving them from their worst faults and assembling a much less impenetrable version of the album for the cd-purchasing public, but even they didn't quite hit the mark. So, a rethinking here: four of the five songs that made it onto both versions (leaving off “German Motor Car”), five from the label’s Not Animal, and three from the band’s Animal!.

Edwards et. al. (there are eight members in all) start from a folk-rock/alt-country base, but there are layers and layers of instrumentation over most of the songs. "Broadripple Is Burning" is the sparsest, mostly just Edwards and an acoustic guitar, but it's well-supplemented with background moans, simple percussion, a piano arpeggio, and some atmospheric reverb. At the other end of the spectrum, songs like "The Ocean (Is Bleeding Salt)" and especially "Pages Written on a Wall" work themselves into a full ruckus. In between there are piano-, synth-, and bassline-driven numbers. "A Children's Crusade on Acid" is strung out over an edgy beat, "Hip Hip Hooray" features a nice Ba Ba section, and there are a couple stretches of surpassing beauty: the lovely two-minuter "There's Talk of Mineshafts," and the chorus and strings bridge of "Cold, Kind, and Lemon Eyes," especially. "As Tall as Cliffs" is the real centerpiece, though, a cheerful, bouncy number that makes use of the band's full trunk of tricks and instruments, building to full cymbal-crashing catharsis. Already, they have a mature sound that's carefully produced and mixed, and they know how to make use of both minimal and full arrangements. Edwards clearly has some songwriting chops as well, one just hopes that he and the band will work through their more solipsistic ambitions and let the audience in.

The Downside:

Obviously, I’ve done away with most of it, at least as far as I’m concerned. MatNSaS’s, especially on Animal, are frequently pretentious and somber to unbearable excess. Even here, “As Tall as Cliffs” and “Holy Cow!” are the only really, well, happy numbers, and one wishes for a couple more.


Since I’m on record arguing against dylaraddict’s first rethinking, I suppose I should explain. As in most things, I’m here a particularist, wary of the general rule. Okkervil River is a good enough band that it seems to me we should simply want as much as they can give us. Most of the charm of The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs is the sheer excess of it. Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s aren’t in that same league. I would never put on Animal, and probably rarely play Not Animal, but this rethinking kicks them up a notch, producing an album I’m quite fond of.