Montreal indie rock trio Plants and Animals have announce The Jungle, their fifth studio album set to be released October 23rd via Secret City Records. Their shortest album yet and certainly their boldest, The Jungle is eight acts in a world full of noise. The album is self-produced and was recorded at Mixart, their studio in Montreal. Today they share their lead single and video “House on Fire,” an upbeat and energetic anthem that seemed to be aligning perfectly with the surreal summer the world will experience this year. “House on Fire” came from Warren’s haunting feeling that a friend who was taking too many sleeping pills might forget to turn his stove off.
The band explains: “We started working on this a couple of years ago. Warren was afraid for a friend’s health. He thought he was self-medicating too much and not taking care of himself. He couldn’t let go of this image of an overworked dude swallowing too many sleeping pills and falling asleep with the stove on. So it began as the place next door, sometime before Greta Thunberg turned the expression into a rallying cry, where Earth is the house and the people are sleeping. It’s terrifying, and on the whole we’re not unlike this friend, are we?”
The Jungle starts with electronic drums that sound like insects at night. A whole universe comes alive in the dark. It’s beautiful, complex and unsettling. Systematic and chaotic. All instinct, no plan. Voices taunt, “yeah yeah yeah.” This tangled time in which we find ourselves is reflected back in shadows.
These are personal experiences made in a volatile world, and they reflect that world right back at us, even by accident. There’s one song Nic sings to his teenage son who was dealing with climate change anxiety and drifting into uncharted independence. The band carries it out slowly together into a sweet blue horizon. Warren wrote the words to another shortly after losing his father. It’s about the things we inherit not necessarily being the things we want. In a broader sense, that’s where a lot of people find themselves right now.
Photo credit: Dominic Berthiaume
