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By: Isabel Dunstan
Date: 2nd Jul 08
Release: Album
To Cure: A broken heart
What:
Self-taught Magic from a Book
Who:
Je Suis Animal
On:
Lost and Lonesome Recording Co.
Win:
We have one copy of the album to give away. To enter, email win@threethousand.com.au with the subject line 'dance juice'
Je Suis Animal took all the interesting subjects of their arts degree and spun them into an album. It's the cinema geek in-jokes told through the strings, wind and melodica-esque cameos that turn this happily Norwegian pop into something suited to a silent film score.
Self-taught Magic from a Book is Lost and Lonesome's fiftieth release and has the right balance of lyrical storytelling and dance-around-your-room juice. The ascending foreplay of lofty vocals and gutter deep drones stir up a sense of haunting. Fight scene -worthy swells of colliding instruments, always catching you by surprise, can make a song's ending almost a relief. The swinging romantic pendulum and glitches of restlessness give away just as much story as the lyrics do.
'Hotel Electrique' invites you to play hide-and-seek in the peculiar hotel featured in the 1908 silent film of the same name; but it gives away the secret that there are strings to make it all work. Then Edgar Allan Poe's 'Mystery of Marie Roget' is investigated and remains uncracked. It's not surprising the film clip to this song is a sweetly produced silent flick.