I love it when you find a band that has snuck by you for years. It’s great discovering a new band, you hear their first flushes of youth - it’s exciting, but that’s it. You have to wait God knows how long for the next record - if it’s that Stone Roses that could be years (and then it was definitely NOT worth the wait…).
So when you discover a band that’s been going for a few years, you can go back and discover how they got to where they are now. Other Lives are one of those bands, who are four albums plus a few EPs into their career. For Their Love is the fourth album, but the first for me.
Hailing from Oklahoma (where I understand the wind comes sweepin' down the plain…), Other Lives music is best described as “Baroque ’n’ roll”. As well as your standard guitar, bass and drums, Other Lives use a dizzying range of instruments including violin, timpani, xylophone, bass clarinet, harmonium, balalaika and indeed the kitchen sink. They make The Divine Comedy look like slackers.
Hey Hey I caught my ear and led me to them, it motors along with thundering drums, a hypnotic piano riff, ecstatically hollering “Hey man, something don’t seem right / they only come at night!” - it’s thrilling stuff.
Elsewhere the drama does not let up, Lost Day is similarly bombastic chamber pop, while Sounds Of Violence and We Wait are more sombre, the latter recalling the murder of singer Jesse Tabish’s friend when they were 17 years old, backed by a tune that would make a fantastic theme for some imagined Western.
The standout is All Eyes - For Their Love, six minutes of orchestral pop that swells and subsides, full of theatrics - it sounds huge.
Check them out; I am just working through the preceding album, a double called Rituals, which on first listen makes For Their Love look restrained…
For fans of: The National, The Divine Comedy, Fleet Foxes