Recorded in LA, Pasadena and Joshua Tree, the record’s twelve songs are spectral and sinewy, often defined by the spaces in between the sounds. A ghost’s whistle weaves itself around a pulsing single note on Lonesome Infidel; Feast to Famine’s hard luck story floats above a guitar part so strung out and washed with distortion it’s become barely recognisable. It’s soul music for anyone who’s long since left the crossroads.
Over the last decade, Lanegan and Garwood have worked in tangent on 2013’s Black Pudding as well as on Lanegan’s solo records (Garwood contributed to 2012’s Blues Funeral and 2017’s Gargoyle after which he toured as part of Lanegan’s band). Writing and recording was split between studio collaboration and sharing music between Garwood’s home in London and Lanegan’s in Los Angeles. Elsewhere, technology helped make the duo’s transatlantic working relationships relatively easy.
“Over the years, we’ve recorded together and apart. This time, I started this record alone, with many animals as company,” says Garwood. “It flowed, I set to work and out it came. Our music is instinct, there is not much talking about it, just creating. I think that if you are at peace with your work, and feeling it right, it flows, and can feel ‘easy’. Music isn’t meant to be hard. Though sometimes it can burn you to ashes. Making music for a singer, so they can inhabit it with a song means hitting the right soul buttons. There is no hit without a miss. It is a healing record, for us the makers, and for the listeners. It grows natural. We are gardeners of sonic feelings.”
While Black Pudding puts Garwood’s mercurial guitar centre stage, With Animals is constructed from a different set of tools. Analogue and dust flecked, it sounds like Lanegan and Garwood have been holed up in a ’60s recording studio while the apocalypse rages outside. Tracks sit on loops that sounds like they’re straight out of There’s A Riot Goin’ On while sparse melodies nod in the direction of British electronic producers like Burial or Boards of Canada. Which is not to say it sounds like any of those things – this is a weird world all of their own design.
“The music is lo-fi, hi-fi run through star dust analogue,” says Garwood. “It’s an 8 track cassette tape machine. Studio tracks got put through the tape to wring out the digital elements of slow tools – one has to override the digital with pure soul, and not be too clean. All effects on the record are genuinely analogue, with love. With dust.”
As befits a record called With Animals, these dusty songs sound like they’re created in the company of the denizens of the night; cats eyes glimpsed in the dark with the fizz and flicker of insects around a dying light.
It’s as pure and spontaneous an ending to an album as one could hope for – a catharsis of sorts and a piece of true alchemy created by two brilliantly singular talents. Here’s to many more of those sunrises… and to those midnight gatherings too.
1. Save Me
2. Feast to Famine
3. My Shadow Life
4. Upon Doing Something Wrong
5. L.A Blue
6. Scarlett
7. Lonesome Infidel
8. With Animals
9. Ghost Stories
10. Spaceman
11. One Way Glass
12. Desert Song
Over the last decade, Lanegan and Garwood have worked in tangent on 2013’s ‘Black Pudding’ as well as on Lanegan’s solo records (Garwood contributed to 2012’s ‘Blues Funeral’ and 2017’s ‘Gargoyle’ after which he toured as part of Lanegan’s band). This summer, the duo are set to release their second album ‘With Animals’ on Friday 24th August.
‘With Animals’, the twelve songs are spectral and sinewy, often defined by the spaces in between the sounds. A ghost’s whistle weaves itself around a pulsing single note on ‘Lonesome Infidel’; ‘Feast to Famine’s’ hard luck story floats above a guitar part so strung out and washed with distortion it’s become barely recognisable. It’s soul music for anyone who’s long since left the crossroads
Lanegan & Garwood have shared a video for ‘Save Me’, the album’s first single and opening track. See it on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XZ2TqnI_jA
The writing and recording of ‘With Animals’ was split between studio collaboration and sharing music between Garwood’s home in London and Los Angeles where Lanegan resides. Technology made the duo’s transatlantic working relationship relatively easy.
“Over the years, we’ve recorded together and apart. This time, I started this record alone, with many animals as company,” says Garwood.
“It flowed, I set to work and out it came. Our music is instinct, there is not much talking about it, just creating. I think that if you are at peace with your work, and feeling it right, it flows, and can feel ‘easy’. Music isn’t meant to be hard. Though sometimes it can burn you to ashes. Making music for a singer, so they can inhabit it with a song means hitting the right soul buttons. There is no hit without a miss. It is a healing record, for us the makers, and for the listeners. It grows natural. We are gardeners of sonic feelings.”
While ‘Black Pudding’ put Garwood’s mercurial guitar centre stage, ‘With Animals’ is constructed from a different set of tools. Analogue and dust flecked, it sounds like Lanegan and Garwood have been holed up in a ’60s recording studio while the apocalypse rages outside. Tracks sit on loops that sounds like they’re straight out of There’s A Riot Goin’ On while sparse melodies nod in the direction of British electronic producers like Burial or Boards of Canada. Which is not to say it sounds like any of those things – this is a weird world all of their own design.
The co-inside with the new record, the duo have announced a number of European headline shows where they will be performing track from both ‘With Animals’ & ‘Black Pudding.’