Je Suis Animal : Self Taught Magic From A Book (Angular Recording Corps)

Je Suis Animal are what they say they are: an untamed band. They’ll be found playing in the forest – little girls’ singing shrilly, crying, screaming, little boys banging drums. They’re but a bunch of weird kids fighting and crawling on the ground. “Self-Taught Magic From A Book” is their first album.

The music they make is painfully pretty. It is simple and clever. The main chanteuse sings words of soft hysteria and lackadaisical desire. There’s a Violette Nozières look in her eyes. High-pitched voice and high-pitched claims.

The music they don’t make is equally pretty. JSA play invisible, secret chords. At times, they rush to the landmine field once set on fire by My Bloody Valentine. You didn’t even know it was still here before they lit it up again. At other times, they are simply out of the world. (A Sunny Day In Glasgow, whom they share glass paper aesthetics with, are just a bit further up the way to estrangement and derealisation/deconstruction of the indiepopscape)
JSA are two girls and three boys. They burst into laughter and burst into tears, with the same truthful eagerness. They are both physical (primitive) and cerebral, both tuneful and experimental, which might be the edgiest place to stand. Their music is mainly dry though, minimal: the deficient noise of lonely hearts beating underneath crystal, transparent skins. Bang. Bang. Bang. It is a sweet syncope – a Stereolabian, cool rumour (Beginning of Time). It is noise forever – It’s love. Girl cries wolf. Boy cries too.

And it’s raining outside. It’s been raining for days. They’re somewhere in Norway staring at their frozen effects pedals and I’m here gazing at my rain-drenched shoes and you’re obviously somewhere else, looking elsewhere, trying to figure out what comes next, and how many more seconds you can hold your breath before it starts to hurt.

If this is life then it’s not funny, but if this is a game I shall play it again. (And I shall play it with you.)