Pattern-Seeking Animals
Prehensile Tales

New album released ten months after the first, a very 70s vibe, we wish we could return to that level of productivity, now we're in an era where even 3 years between albums is a minimum, but bands comfortably take 4 or 5 years. Well, this material was partly ready for some time.

The Pattern-Seeking Animals change their approach this time and surprise us. As I had already mentioned, I feared that the choice to focus on longer tracks would not favor the band, which has a melodic approach that emerges better in shorter durations, but I was somewhat proven wrong. To be honest, in this second work, the band wants to go further, doesn't want to repeat the first album, isn't content with giving us another great melodic album but wants to add new, even quite particular ideas, and this choice pays off. In any case, the elements that made the first work great remain: there's still the fresh, light, and modern sound, the melodic yet sharp synth sounds remain, organs and mellotrons abound without ever imitating the usual vintage prog, flutes, strings, and brass also abound without explicitly falling into the symphonic; in essence, they use rather old sounds making them seem incredibly modern, they really find a way to employ them in service of a modern sound, and that's not an easy feat at all.

So we find ourselves talking about an album that adopts a classic prog structure and is certainly more prog than the previous one overall, only 6 mostly long tracks for a total duration reaching 55 minutes. The first two tracks, about 8 minutes each, I must say don't seem artificially stretched at all; "Raining Hard in Heaven" has multiple faces, it starts off cheerful and jaunty, a sort of well-structured and flowing melodic march, a sort of modern "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" but it also resembles "Why Don't You Get a Job?" by The Offspring, but then after a relaxed part comes a frenetic instrumental section, a real whirlwind that sweeps the listener away before the slow and expansive finale; "Here in My Autumn" is also carefree, flowing, and liberating, a title that doesn't suit a melody that to me seems very summery, a triumph of sparkling guitars, mandolins, crystal-clear synth pokes, carefree strings and flutes, all massively supported by Dave Meros' bass.

But they go even further, they want to go overboard, and there the Pattern-Seeking Animals gift us a 17-minute suite. Giving a judgment to "Lifeboat" was not easy, it isn't very dynamic or lively, it maintains a more or less constant intensity and it's not what one expects from a track of such length, one doesn't spot a real page turn between one section and the other; if one loves old-style suites, this might disappoint, needless to say at first my idea was of "an unspontaneous track artificially elongated"... then I remembered that "Cygnus X-1 Book II" by Rush is decidedly less varied and repeats the same melodies much more than this and yet we consider it a masterpiece, so much so that I thought "does a suite have to have significant musical shifts to be appreciable?". The more lively passages are essentially in the first minutes, then there are two parts that seem like heterozygous twins, in both Meros hits hard with his bass and a blunt and clumsy sax intervenes among his strikes, then it all concludes with a slower finale but still characterized by robust riffs; and in between, there are even flute and trumpet solos that don't go unnoticed, ultimately it's a solid modern suite, a modern gem of melodic symphonic prog but not too symphonic, with strokes of genius in between.

The excessively elongated track is instead "Soon But Not Today", which truly didn't need to last 12 minutes; it starts slow with piano, strings, and mandolins, then quickly becomes frenetic and whirlwind with bass blows and mighty brass, interrupted by smart reggae and electronic inserts, but after the sixth minute, the track seems to have nothing more to say, it settles into the rhythms of a symphonic and melodic ballad that could have definitely used some cuts.

The oddest ideas are found in the two shorter central songs. "Elegant Vampires" has peculiar Middle Eastern or perhaps more Eastern European sounds but well inserted in a more American context, almost as if we were visiting a carpet store in a U.S. metropolis; strings, synths, and percussion well portray that atmosphere once again supported by a bass this time more jazzy and less metallic. But what to say about "Why Don't We Run", another unexpected track where frenetic acoustic strums, dazzling percussion, lavish strings, and rhythmic bass create a mix between the Wild West and Latin America, between Morricone and the Gypsy Kings, between country and western and lambada; it might vaguely remind one of the adventurous Muse of "Black Holes and Revelations", particularly tangible is the structural similarity with "City of Delusion", both for the strings and the trumpet solo.

And so? Is the first or the second album better? Good question, it takes an analysis at the end of which no sure answer is reached: the first album wins in terms of melodies even if this second album fulfills its melodic role just as brilliantly, on the contrary, this one has an edge in terms of style variety and solutions but the first one wasn't slacking off in the quest for original sounds (I fell in love with it for just that); in essence, each of the two albums stands out for one aspect but shines also for the other, they seem complementary. It's worth remembering though that the sense of existence of this side-project is the enhancement of the melodic element, and in this the first album perhaps proves more functional; but for someone always looking for that something extra and that particular touch, here the second prevails. Perhaps it was an album to be made later, but better to review a different album than to find myself writing a few lines just to say that "the record simply confirms the greatness of what was done previously blah blah blah...". What the Pattern-Seeking Animals truly are will eventually be revealed by the third album, if there will ever be one (I hope so, and maybe not too far ahead), meanwhile "Prehensile Tales" is one of the best records of the past year.