Plants and Animals : Parc Avenue :: Review
Montreal-based trio Plants and Animals are a multitalented group that doesn’t like to stay pigeonholed in one genre for too long. Sophisticated and extremely adept at melding influences into a heady stew, “Parc Avenue” opens with the Badfingeresque “Bye, Bye, Bye” before delving into the proggy “Good Friend.” Smart lyrics crash headlong with non-sequiturs as “Good Friend” offers the charming advice of mentioning “It takes a good friend to let you know when you have your head up your ass,” before “Faerie Dance” states “I didn’t know anything at all.”
The driving “Feedback In The Field” features a whistled melody along with plenty of playful wah-wah pedal. The flow of the album is disrupted by “A Loree Des Bois” which begins as a folksy lament and then segues into an ethereal mess. “New Kind of Love” sounds like a song that Arcade Fire left off “Funeral” and allows the momentum to build again until the Zappa like “Mercy” where chanted cheerleader vocals mesh next to a Yes inspired guitar explosion. The solemn and stately “Keep It Real” closes the album appropriately enough before the tacked on jam band outtake “Guru” effectively shuts things down.
Rating: 
