When you think Oklahoma, you think Pistol Pete, bombings, tumbleweeds and maybe even Hanson. You don’t think of rich, moody, harmonic folk pop, but that is exactly what Other Lives is. From Stillwater, Oklahoma, this five person group has everything you want in an indie folk band: soft steady beats, a string section to melt your heart, layers upon layers of harmonized vocals, and lyrics to make you rethink your decision not become a wandering cowboy.
The band started in 2004 under the named Kunek, and release their album Flight of the Flynns in 2006. Fast forward to 2009 and the band is still in Stillwater, but they dropped the name Kunek, got signed to TBD records, and released a self-titled album under the name Other Lives. The band enjoyed some popularity after this name change and new album, and even got some of their songs featured on “One Tree Hill” and “Grey’s AnatomyÛ…truly the barometer for success in indie music.
The band’s latest album, Tamer Animals, is noteworthy for many reasons, especially for the wholeness of the album. This is not an album divided into top tracks, background noise, and skippable songs, it is eleven songs that demand to be listened to from beginning to end in the correct order. That’s not to say each individual song is not unique, it’s just that the album is the musical version of a family tree. Subtle harmonies are wound together with earlier sounds and are transformed into something new yet familiar. Each song is a sibling, the same gene pool, but slightly different.
It’s hard to deny the influence that the Other Lives’s midwestern background has had on their music. The imagery is ingrained into the lyrics, in that you can see prairies going on forever, the long lonely roads, the rocking chair on the front porch, and numerous other quintessential midwestern vignettes. The instrumental arrangements are just as important as the lyrics for the feeling of the music. The acoustic guitar sounds like it came straight from a cowboy campfire circle, and lead vocals have an authentic amount of rasp. Think John Wayne meets Loudon Wainwright.
The other side is that because Stillwater is such a small town, the band had an almost ultimate freedom to explore, discover, and practice their music. Stillwater has a population of around forty five thousand people -hardly Chicago or Minneapolis, this is the real midwest. Other Lives can’t be placed into a certain category according to their hometown, because there’s nothing to judge them against.
The Other Lives’s new video for their single “For 12” is an incredibly beautiful Western a la Bowie’s “Major TomÛ. The premise is the lead singer, Jessie Tabish, alone in a rocket ship exploring Mars. The website for Tamer Animals offers a deeper look into the video. The widescreen view takes up the entire screen, and there are places to stop, cut, explore, and remix the audio as it is happening. Even if you don’t like music, videos, space, beards, or anything cool (why are you here?), you will like this website. That’s a guarantee.
Editor’s note: Catch Other Lives opening for Radiohead this spring!