Animal, Surrender! Release "A Boot For Every Bane" And Announce Fall Tour
Photo by Maria Baranova
Animal, Surrender! return with their highly anticipated new album A Boot for Every Bane, out now via Ernest Jenning Record Co. Featuring acclaimed singles “Misswanderer” and “Poinciana,” the record captures the band’s urgent and adventurous spirit. To celebrate, the band embark on a fall tour, kicking off with a record release show October 1 at Cassette in Queens.…
Post-Rock Trio Animal, Surrender! (Members Of Sunwatchers, Solar Motel Band, Rhyton) Release New Single "Misswanderer"
Photo by Maria Baranova
On September 26, Animal, Surrender! will release their new album A Boot for Every Bane on Ernest Jenning Record Co. (pre-order). Today the band is excited to share the latest pre-release single from the upcoming release, “Misswanderer,” which is available now on all streaming platforms. The track follows lead single “Poinciana” and offers another glimpse into the album’s…
Animal, Surrender! is a duo made up of Sunwatchers’ Peter Kerlin on bass and Rob Smith on drums. On their first, self-titled album, the pair execute, loping, elastic grooves, nodding towards folk and blues but never quite settling into genre. In her review, Jennifer Kelly called the song, “Led by the Bit,” “an intriguing rattletrap construction, bounded by intricate, syncopated percussion but with Kerlin’s bass musing its bass-like dreams within these constraints.” Here’s what Kerlin and Smith are listening to.
Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy — “White Nile”
PETE: I first started to slip into the Animal, Surrender! sound world upon hearing African Skies, by Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy at Domino Sound in New Orleans in 2011. I asked the purveyor, “What is this and please tell me it’s for sale.” It’s been in regular rotation since. Pure magic, flawless without being precious for a single moment.
Jeff Parker — “2019-07-08-ii”
ROB: The drummer here, Jay Bellerose is my favorite currently-working drummer... all space, tone, and touch. Earthy patterns intersect and breathe in ways that simultaneously nurture and tug at the other voices in the ensemble. Although I absolutely love what he does with groups as dad-rockish as Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, this heady double-LP from Eremite really gives us a clear open view of his masterful creativity with timbre and air.
Ann O Aro — “Zardin”
PETE: The economy of the arrangements on this record and the spare, precise production were a touchstone in the recording stage of A,S!. There is some crazy stuff going on here though. O Aro’s voice is clearly a thing of beauty but that is 100% not the point at all. The music has an undeniable force and is bound together with an incredible tension. An example of the Maloya anti-colonial music from the Island of Reunion where she hails and a deeply personal dredging and catharsis synthesized seamlessly. Shout out to Mike Bones for turning me on to it.
Gunter Schickert — “Puls”
ROB: Klaus Schulze’s roadie didn’t use any synthesizers or sequencers to craft his own singular, prowling Berlin hypnosis. The warp and weft of multitrack tapes, guitars, and drums is exactly the kind of mind-fabric that prepared me for working within Animal, Surrender!
Jack Rose & The Black Twig Pickers — “Kensington Blues”
PETE: Rose loomed large for me. This track played on repeat in my mind for years. It’s so effortless, it’s as if the music existed already, unheard, and the band is just revealing it. My effort to balance multiple voices on the bass comes out of a fascination with this “American Primitive” sound. Nathan Bowles is here on percussion. Bowles shared the drum chair with Rob in Pigeons!
Hopkinson Smith — “Robert de Visée: Pieces de Theorbe”
LES SYLVAINS DE Mr. COUPERIN par Mr. de Visée
ROB: One of the greatest musical conversations I ever had was speaking intimately with the genius lutenist Hopkinson Smith over pints of stout about unmeasured preludes and the intersections of baroque string music and bluegrass. This incredible 1979 recording of works for theorbo, an epic bass lute, shows how a multi-course bass instrument originally designed for accompaniment can take the spotlight, much as Peter’s 8-string bass does within this group.
Jessica Pavone — “Dawn to Dark”
PETE: I was split about which Pavone track to include here. Her recent “less tempered” works are riveting, but I chose this early Pavone chamber piece featuring my old bandmate, Emily Manzo, a pianist of extraordinary ability, who is also a gifted songwriter and singer. Here Pavone casts her as a vocalist. There’s musicality and presence in every nanosecond of her performance. Stunning yet never bombastic. The pacing and restraint that Jessica brings to the whole record leads you deep into some psychic space, you forget you’re listening to “chamber music.”
Henry Cow — “Nirvana for Mice”
ROB: Chris Cutler’s way of feeling deep grooves inside of twisted, asymmetrical compositions always sounds brand new and shocking to my ears despite this album’s 1973 session date. He’ll crack a nasty backbeat inside a careful avant woodwind arrangement, forcing your ass to swivel despite your brain being patiently sliced open on the band’s dissection table. Dada blues for sure.
75 Dollar Bill — “Beni Said”
PETE: One of the most consistently inspiring live bands in New York for the past decade. It was while lost in one of Che’s asymmetrical Mauritanian riffs on his modified Hagstrom 12-string that I had an “ah ha!” moment about the 8-string bass and how to bring it into the foreground. We’ve had an ongoing dialogue about it that has kept me going in those moments when I’m questioning this weird obsession I have with this uncooperative instrument.
Bullwackies All Stars — “Kicking Scott, Rockfort Dub”
ROB: Lloyd Barnes’ Bronx dub devastation provided an early shared navigational system for us in Animal, Surrender! Wackie spirals you down infinite, dissociative avenues of echo paved with the deepest bass around. Melodic organisms bloom from the cracks and illuminate pathways through the twisted urban ecology, clouds of pungent smoke notwithstanding.
