Plants and Animals
Parc Avenue

After some past productions, including an EP and a mini-album, the Plants and Animals manage to compose their first true long-distance work: "Parc Avenue". The band consists of four members, including violinist Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire, Belle Orchestre), who is in charge of the arrangement. Plants and Animals range between rock, alternative, post-tinged folk and sometimes country, with snippets of a jam band. They themselves, amusingly, like to define themselves as a post-classic rock band.

This is a peculiar album; rich in peculiarities, yet often contradictory, in fact, the various tracks are only vaguely related to each other and are erected in a somewhat disorderly manner, seeking too much instrumental setup and thus neglecting the proper form to give to the track. The most exciting moments of the album are few but pleasant, and can be found in tracks like "New Kind Of Love" or in the eclectic samba of "Mercy". But let’s say more rightly that almost every track has its peak, sometimes instrumental, other times choral, and yet other times perfect revival of 70s southern rock, as in the case of "A L' Orée Des Bois".

"Parc Avenue" is a nice and listenable album, thanks to its strange ability to move (a peculiarity surely inherited from Arcade Fire), transitioning in the same track from country-rock to folk or from post-rock to bolder choral moments. But I must also say that it doesn’t hold up well even to the third listen, probably due to its lack of true personality and a not well-defined musical body.