3 out of 5

Label: President Gator

Produced by: Owen Evans

The sing-song pop of Roar is slowed down and woozed up a bit with more production sass, drawing in influences from modern day psyche of the Elephant 6 collective, and the twee pop of Shins and the like. But Owen Evans (and his musical accompaniment) remain mostly dedicated to those old school Beatles / Beach Boys’ harmonies, leaning into the more experimental releases from those bands. Combined with Evans’ absolutely fascinating lyrics – which theme around animals, pairing their behaviors with human emotions around loss and fear and illustrating that with some really discomforting imagery – Impossible Animals is surely a compelling listen, worth sitting down to with headphones and digging into its musical layers and the words.

But: in trying to up the weird and skew away from the easy swallowed pop rock of former releases, we admittedly don’t land on as many singles as before, and the production isn’t quite dense enough to make the psychedelia sound fresh – the tunes are more familiar than striking, or just slightly off-kilter without being so strange to make an immediate imprint. It’s as though Evans was attempting to balance out being accessible with going more artsy, when siding one way or the other might’ve made for a stronger album: tracks that could be consider more indulgent or bombastic stand out, like when playing with the vocals on Ghost (of 7th Street) and Fading Kitten Syndrome, or letting the rock ring out on centerpiece highlight Hope.

Impossible Animals is an album I appreciate the more I sit with it, but it’s half-and-half stylistic approach also makes it rather ephemeral: once I stop listening to it, it tends to fall out of mind. On the other hand, when it cycles through my playlist, it’s a very happy rediscovery.