Omschrijving

Although she had an international hit single with Pilot of the Airwaves back in 1979, despite a steady stream of albums, Dore’s enjoyed more success as a songwriter than as an artist in her own right. She dropped out of making music in the 80s, returning in 1995 with Things Change, since which time she’s released an album roughly every three years, receiving glowing reviews and solid sales among her committed fanbase.
 
The cover featuring detail (a scared-looking monkey embracing a cat) from Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem’s exile from Eden painting The Fall Of Man, ‘Like Animals’ is her tenth, co-written album with regular collaborator Julian Littman, who contributes a verity of instruments while Dore variously handles guitar, piano, ukulele and harmonium alongside appearances by Gareth Hugh Davies on double bass and cello, trumpeter Quentin Collins and Jessie May Smart and Jackie Oates on violin and viola, respectively.
 
With hints of Slavic music, she kicks off in political comment form with Collateral, a sketch of those ready to step over anyone, the collateral of the title, on his relentless climb to the top of the pile, but serving a cautionary warning that there will be other, younger, hungrier versions of himself coming up behind ready to do the same.
 
Featuring violin, trumpet and thigh-slaps, Rivers of Cortisol was apparently inspired by a panic attack while driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, resulting in a motorways phobia for some two decades, the song being about how things – especially your psychological state, can change at the flick of a (neurological) switch and the coping strategies to deal with the cortisol flood, most notably by singing, be it “some old Jimmy Rogers” or whatever.
 
This all relates to the album title, specifically the ukulele and pizzicato violin-led track Animal Brain, and Dore’s reading matter in the run-up to the album, exploring the function of the brain’s limbic system (as indicated on the inner sleeve illustration), in particular the amygdala which controls feelings such as anger, sadness and fear as well as influencing decision-making decisions. Or, to put it more simply, these are songs about how we often let our emotional responses take control of us and those animal instincts, such as fight or flight, kick in, often contrary to rational thought such that, in the track in question (where she reminds me of Janis Ian’s fragility) she sings “Lying awake. I hear you pacing in your cage/You plot revenge/And I forgive/But you don’t”.
 
The thigh-slaps are back, as is another animal reference, joined by banjo, slide and fretless bass for Ray and Lisa, Lisa and Joe, an infidelity narrative in which  Lisa lives with Ray but cheats with Joe while the latter works early hours before coming home at four to watch “the same old rolling news again”. It’s one of those nagging songs that works its way inside your mind until you find your blood humming it.
 
There’s a far simpler arrangement of just guitars, slide and U bass for A Hundred Miles of Nothing, a wonderful song written and performed with Michele Stodart, a wish to escape the bustle and just stare out into the distance, “click that little engine off/And step down from the wheel”, the simplicity of the sound and Dore’s quivering, quietly soaring voice at times evoking an old-time almost Vera Lynn feel.
 
Animals return for Terrible Lie, Dore on neurotic piano notes and joined by Oates with Collins on flugelhorn for a waltz-time song about a  mother trying to calm her child’s fears of a dangerous and scary world with its military parades, assuring her that the homeless man who disappeared when winter came has just gone somewhere warm and, in the face of burning fires,  the animals “run to hills to be safe, little one/For the animals always know”, asking whether, faced with the alternative truth, this was such a terrible lie.

Tracklist: 
1. Collateral (4:36)
2. Rivers of Cortisol (4:26)
3. Animal Brain (3:59)
4. Ray and Lisa, Lisa and Joe (3:50)
5. A Hundred Miles of Nothing (4:16) met Michele Stoddart
6. Terrible Lie (4:26)
7. Sleep Like a Starfish (3:19)
8. Blowing Leaves (3:33)
9. Ordinary Names (4:05)

Staat er compleet op, 20% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster.

“Muziek is kunst en kunst moet voor iedereen bereikbaar zijn, anders is het elitair.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UGf1IV3_IM