Other Lives - Tamer Animals (LP) - Pink Vinyl

Tamer Animals arrived in 2011 with the kind of quiet confidence that sneaks up on you. Other Lives had already hinted at their orchestral leanings, but here the Oklahoma band turned them into a world. It feels built plank by plank in a small room, strings and woodwinds braided into pianos, hand percussion, and those unhurried rhythms that suggest long drives across big skies. You can hear the patience in it. Nothing rushes. Everything slides into place.

Jesse Tabish’s voice sits at the center, warm and a little weathered, like a storyteller leaning over the table after midnight. Around him, the band’s multi-instrumental instincts make the songs feel tactile. They stack harmoniums and violins, add low brass for shade, then pull back so a single piano figure can carry a verse. It’s the arrangement craft that makes Tamer Animals feel cinematic without ever turning into wallpaper. Plenty of records chase mood. This one builds habitat.

“For 12” remains the record’s calling card, and not just because it was the single that got them in front of more ears. The song moves with a steady, trotting pulse, guitar lines curling like heat mirages, and a melody that feels lifted from a half-remembered western. It’s a widescreen moment, yet it keeps its edges soft, more mirage than panorama. Title track “Tamer Animals” is the slow bloom, piano ticking like a clock while strings and voice gather into something gently seismic. Then there’s “Dust Bowl III,” which leans into place and memory. The lyric nod to the region’s history matters less than the way the arrangement evokes dry wind and distance. Even if you’ve never set foot in Stillwater, you’ll feel the dust on your sleeves.

Part of the appeal is how human the record sounds. You can hear the care in the mic placements, the layering, the little breaths between phrases. The band spent real time shaping these pieces, and it shows. They had the chops to pull it off live too, which is why it made perfect sense when Radiohead tapped Other Lives as openers on their 2012 tour. Those arena nights put this patient, orchestral folk-rock in front of crowds who came for polyrhythms and glitch, and it worked. The overlap is the devotion to texture, to building a song from tiny gears instead of blunt force.

Critics heard it right away. Outlets like Pitchfork and NPR zeroed in on the meticulous arrangements and the album’s sense of place, and fans latched onto favorites. “Old Statues” is a sleeper that blooms with repeated listens, the kind of track that sets a mood for an entire afternoon. “As I Lay My Head Down” brings the lights low and lets Tabish’s phrasing carry the emotional weight. Nothing here is showy for its own sake. Even when the band stacks strings upon strings, there’s restraint. The songs never lose their bones.

If you’re crate-digging, Tamer Animals vinyl is a keeper. The low-end thrum of the floor toms, the air on the strings, the little room sounds that digital tends to flatten all come alive on wax. I’ve seen Other Lives vinyl tucked into the staff-picks shelf more than once, usually with a handwritten note that says something like cinematic folk for late nights. That’s pretty spot on. If you like to buy Other Lives records online, keep an eye on reissues and colored variants, since they tend to disappear fast. And if you’re lucky enough to stumble across a clean copy at a Melbourne record store while browsing through vinyl records Australia style, don’t overthink it. Take it home and let it unfurl.

What keeps me coming back is the balance. Tamer Animals is rich but never cloying, intimate but not small. It finds a middle path between the indie orchestral sweep of the late 2000s and the dusty Americana that runs through Oklahoma songwriting, turning both into something recognizably theirs. Even now, as they’ve continued to evolve, this record feels like a statement piece. It’s the one that made casual listeners into loyalists.

So yes, file it next to the quiet classics. Spin it when the house is still and the light is getting low. Other Lives albums on vinyl tend to reward that kind of time, and this one may be the most generous of the bunch. The songs don’t shout to be remembered. They settle in, and then they stay.