poppedmusic

Zaba

Released June 9th 2014

Time is always at a premium around these parts and an album has to be really special to grab my attention and force me to sit down and really get to grips with it let alone put fingers to keys to write about it. Glass Animals have managed to completely takeover the last week or so and have been on my listening devices in every possible area of my life: every room in  the house, the car, at the gym. It would seem that I cannot in fact get enough of this enchanting album.

Vinyl crackle. Who doesn’t love this? No one, that’s the answer and anyone who manages to use it in a fresh context and make it work always has my vote. While Glass Animals might call this musical interlude, Intruxx,”weird” I call it genius. I’ve become ensconced in another world where I’m not sure if it’s intergalactic or deep sea water diving or somehow a bit of both. My imagination becomes wide open like I’m creeping around uncharted territory yet feel strangely at home.  I find it to be a wonderfully captivating instrumental.

Hazey takes a step closer into the world of hip hop channelling Snoop Dogg’s Drop It Like It’s Hot before turning into a hot and steamy track whose lyrics could be taken and fashioned into a tale of love, lust and control. While last single, Gooey, has a real feeling of joy and play about it. For me it conjures up something akin to the chocolate factory in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory; a mystical unbelievable place where you want to run wild and take in everything, even if perhaps you shouldn’t. I think it’s the chimes and the lyrics that have a childlike subtext that make it feel this way for me.

It makes me wonder if Glass Animals are closest Hunger Games fans. Something in the lyrics for Cocoa Hooves seems to suggest that they might well just be. With lyrics about hiding, bows and arrows and setting wings on fire. Then again, it could all just be total coincidence, but I’m enjoying adding the probable fictitious subtext.

Something that I love about Zaba is the choice for the opening track. Flip might not seem, at first, to be an obvious choice due to it’s very slow and sparse start but it is is a track that seeps into your subconscious. It slowly bewitches the listener as it grows in texture and speed until you actually want to “shake your feathers and break loose.”  It teases you about what else is to come and it does it majestically.

Zaba isn’t really an album you can stick into a category and that’s something that really appeals to me. The vocal is soft and close, the music moves between traditional band (although never for very long) and experimental electronica. It weaves in and out of genres and decades while the overall feel of the album is very much conceptual.

Listen to Gooey here: