New Animal - "Falling Up"

Atlanta's New Animal first popped up on my radar last year with the raw fiercely addictive number "Nightmares of Candy Yang & The Black Italian," a track band member Derek Burdette composed while banging away on his phone and a chord organ after waking up from a nightmare about two past failed relationships. The duo's newest track, "Falling Up," works around a similar visceral and emotional release with raw home-recorded vocal harmonies billowing and building into sublime heights. The moment this song turns into real headphone candy though is at the 3:35 mark when that flurry of keys hits and launches the harmonies into the stratosphere. Dig in below, and grab the cassette single from Old Flame Records.

New Animal - "Falling Up"


Previously:
New Animal - "Nightmares of Candy Yang & The Black Italian"

Interview: New Animal's Kris Hermstad & Derek Burdette

Aside from the new Radiohead, the album I can't seem to stop playing is the debut from Atlanta's New Animal. The 15-track album—available entirely for free at the group's Bandcamp page—is a richly dense and nuanced psychedelic pop record that weaves its way from a wild lo-fi dance-fueled opening through vast synth and effect-driven soundscapes, uptempo rock, a quiet campfire ballad, and the vocal harmony and harmonium-filled closer "Out There." Through both its light and dark moments, the feeling that permeates through the record is a celebratory one: this is a duo that clearly loves making music and their enjoyment of it can be heard through every foreign and freshly conceived of sound.


So, first off, what are your names and how old are you guys?
Kris Hermstad, 24, Derek Burdette, 25.

What’s the first song you learned to play and on what instrument?
Kris: I'm pretty sure it was that song "Santa Monica" by Everclear (on guitar). That damn riff!!
Derek: "Come as you are" by Nirvana. Same with "Santa Monica," it seems like if you were growing up and playing guitar in the early 90s, everyone was playing the same riffs.