AEM116 Power Animal

If you’ve seen Bela Fleck in con­cert more than once, either by choice or by force of fam­ily who believe this sin­gu­lar artist to be the only point of over­lap in your respec­tive mus­cal inter­ests, then you’ll begin to notice that parts of his con­cert rou­tine resur­face across shows. To the extent that a musi­cal exchange can be scripted, these are, with the most notable exam­ple being that of the “vir­tu­oso duel,” in which Fleck’s pit­ted against a fel­low musi­cian in an epic blue­grass shred bat­tle. This alone would be enough to cap­ture the inter­est of most audi­ence mem­bers, and is the point at which I usu­ally start check­ing Twit­ter on my phone, but he usu­ally adds in a cute lit­tle twist to boot–the chal­lenger is pre­sented as a col­lege edu­cated, for­mally trained prod­uct of the sys­tem, while Fleck boasts a mere high school diploma to his name (nev­er­mind that it was from a pres­ti­gious per­form­ing arts school). Inevitably, Fleck defeats his neme­sis, demon­strat­ing the supe­ri­or­ity of good old fash­ioned street smarts and per­sonal dis­cov­ery over the rigid dis­ci­pline of the con­ser­va­tory method. While Bela Fleck’s not exactly your aver­age front porch ban­joist, his broad point is a decent one–education is no sub­sti­tute for true vision and cre­ative inspi­ra­tion. Keith Hamp­son dropped out of high school when he was 16, and soon every class on his imag­i­nary sched­ule read “music.”

Power Ani­mal emerged from the ashes of Hampson’s failed attempt at nor­malcy, and like some real life rehash of Fight Club, I imag­ine him step­ping into the cave of his own muse and find­ing com­fort there. Through­out our exchanges, Hamp­son dropped sub­tle and no doubt unin­ten­tional hints that he’s not exactly swim­ing with the main stream. Days went by between e-mails, fol­lowed by an apolo­getic note to the tune of, “Sorry I kinda had to ‘half-ass’ the bio. I don’t have much com­puter time.” Given that I receive 15 e-mails a day from douchy Aus­tralian teen-rock bands with a $10k pub­lic­ity bud­get and 4 music videos for their only song, it’s refresh­ing and ever so slightly jar­ring to hear from some­one who exists mostly in the pre-digital era. More­over, he makes a point of not­ing that every cur­rent mem­ber of Power Ani­mal (all eight of ‘em) is from North­east Philly, an area of the city sup­pos­edly bereft of musi­cal cul­ture, thus mak­ing Power Ani­mal an odd sin­gu­lar­ity of its kind. Unlike Brook­lynites who might drop out of CUNY to absorb the rich music scene around them, sens­ing tan­gi­bly that “something’s hap­pen­ing” and want­ing to be a part of it, Hampson’s with­drawl is to a self con­tained space in which ideas and iso­la­tion fuse to form some­thing orig­i­nal, emo­tive, and enor­mously enjoy­able. Fans of com­po­si­tion­ally obtuse musi­cal col­lec­tives with a thor­ough ground­ing in pop (Bro­ken Social Scene, Akron/Family and Cud­dle Magic all come to mind) will dig this 7-inch.

I know summer’s wind­ing to a close, but if there’s room on your iPods for just one more vaca­tion mega-jam, let aptly titled A-side “Sum­mer Came From Nowhere” be it. With a sim­ple repeat­ing melody, float­ing synth lines, and a break­down tag com­plete with dis­torted cheers, this song’s become my charm against the impend­ing win­ter months. Power Ani­mal shuns any tra­di­tional notion of instru­men­ta­tion for an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that toys with cacoph­ony but never goes so far as to loose its hard-earned momen­tum. The group’s eight mem­bers are encour­aged to play “every suit­able instru­ment they [can] get their hands on other than gui­tar,” and if pos­si­ble, all at once. Clock­ing in at under three min­utes, “Sum­mer Came From Nowhere” is almost a pre­lude, an in-your-face intro­duc­tion that boldly stakes claim to the musi­cal ter­ri­tory it inhab­its. Tak­ing a page from 80s pop, new wave, and even prog rock, it so thor­oughly over­whelms the senses that the tran­si­tion into B-side “The Turn Around” is an almost wel­come reprieve.

We’re ush­ered into the song by chil­dren singing, “Hello, buddy just turn around” and then dropped into what I’d imag­ine a Books / Suf­jan Stevens col­lab­o­ra­tion might sound like, but with more inten­sity than either of these two artists could ever put down on wax. The sim­i­lar­i­ties between “The Turn Around” and the musi­cal style reg­u­larly employed by The Books go well beyond crit­i­cal com­par­i­son or mere homage–there are some direct quotes and rhyth­mic motifs that have been lifted almost unchanged from the orig­i­nal tracks. But far from being rep­re­hen­si­ble, it’s intrigu­ing to see an artist sport influ­ences so recent and give them a sense of urgency and vibrance unheard on the orig­i­nal record­ing. Beck lifted the strings on Serge Gainsbourg’s “Melody Nel­son” for his album Sea Change, not because he didn’t think any­one would notice, but because he had some­thing to con­tribute to Gainsbourg’s musi­cal sen­ti­ments, and the most effi­cient way of accom­plish­ing this is to take the idea, quote it, and expand upon it. So too is the case with “The Turn Around” and its Books sam­ples or Suf­jan Stevens horn melodies. Like every­thing else Hamp­son writes, it’s the col­lec­tive effect of these voices, cou­pled with some lit­tle man sit­ting on his shoul­der shout­ing “GO!!! GO!!! GO!!! GO!!! GO!!! GO!!!” that makes the result­ing pas­tiche a sub­stan­tively new experience.

While nowhere near as epi­cally famous as they deserve to be, Power Ani­mal pulled off a suc­cess­ful U.S. tour this past Spring, and has a brand new record under their belt. If you have any inter­est what­so­ever in music, I sug­gest you pick up a copy of Peo­ple Songs, cour­tesy of Waaga Records and iTunes.

Ben Heller

[[[Down­load the 7-inch]]]