Other Lives, Other Lives
Featured Album
Beguiling and dreamy art-rock that both earns and transcends its Radiohead comparisons
Radiohead comparisons are inevitable when sizing up the debut LP by Other Lives. The virtuosic use of cello, violin, piano and organ, combined with proggy grandiosity; a lead singer (Jesse Tabish) whose voice is freighted with weary, Yorke-ian woe; backhanded sentiments like "Anyone can change/ If your life's not over." (Gulp.) Both bands are even on the same label.
But this Stillwater, Oklahoma, quintet deserves praise on its own merits. Other Lives demonstrates genuine musical chops — sporting songs that should appeal to anyone who admires the intricacy and pan-musicality of acts like Sufjan Stevens and Andrew Bird. "Matador" is by turns flamenco-inflected and, thanks to a lone trumpet, noirish. The desultory "AM Theme" sounds like some lost classic from the heyday of '70s AM radio. "Black Tables" is stark and raw, with Jenny Hsu's cello nurturing a sense of doom.
The music supervisors at Grey's Anatomy tapped the latter for an episode in which Derek (Patrick Dempsey) dies on the operating table. Turns out it was just Grey (Ellen Pompeo) having a bad dream (or a bad McDreamy?), but the pairing of Other Lives with a sequence about the dread buried in one's subconscious feels right. When it sounds as beguiling as this album does, it's a dream you won't want to end.
