Other Lives will hit the Bowery Ballroom before joining Radiohead later this month (photo by James Rhodes)
Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey St. between Bowery & Christie St.
Friday, February 17, $15, 9:00
212-533-2111
www.otherlives.com
www.boweryballroom.com
Before joining up with Radiohead at the end of the month, U.S. band Other Lives are going on a whirlwind tour of North America, hitting fourteen cities in eighteen nights. The quintet is on the road in support of their second disc, the lovely Tamer Animals (TBD Records, May 2011), a lush suite of songs that swirl and flow into one another effortlessly. Recorded over a span of sixteen months in their hometown of Stillwater, Oklahoma, Tamer Animals consists of eleven carefully constructed soundscapes that evoke Ennio Morricone and Pink Floyd while delving into Western balladry, Asian traditional music, and medieval epics. The songs combine lofty, existential poetic lyrics with lilting, ethereal background vocals that reach to the heavens. “Solitary motion, in the wake of an avalanche / Deer in the headlights, there goes a weaker one / He’s listenin’ in the fast gaze, I don’t care now to see the way / Do you hear the silence? I was far too late,” Jesse Tabish sings over a haunting minimalist piano on the title track. “We’re on our way,” he adds in the acoustic “Dust Bowl III.” Featuring Tabish on piano, guitar, and lead vocals, Josh Onstott on bass and organ, Jenny Hsu on cello and piano, Colby Owens on drums, and Jonathon Mooney on piano, violin, and guitar, Other Lives are indeed on their way. You can catch them at the Bowery Ballroom on February 17 with Sydney-based five-piece WIM and Brooklyn duo Lucius.