Our Brother The Native - Tooth & Claw
[FatCat]

Although still in their teens, Our Brother The Native have recorded one of the best debut albums in recent years. Unlike "conventional" methods, this trio managed to complete their debut album Tooth & Claw through the unorthodox use of exchanging ideas and demos via email.

For the most part, Tooth & Claw is sketchy throughout, but their fun vision to music creation is what makes the album so enthralling. Here is a collection of pieces where anything and everything at hand becomes absorbed into the music; ranging from real instruments like the guitar, drums, bass and keyboards, to the use of kids toys, detuned radios, bird sounds, tin-pot percussion and various household objects.

A love of bands like Animal Collective is clearly transparent throughout, although Our Brother The Native only look to the lo-fi psych-folk recording oddities of the band for inspiration instead of imitation. The trio build their own tracks with dense layers of skewed sounds and ethereal vocal chants, that dramatically change course to unfold new unearthly delights.

The results are spell-bounding; with 12 tracks of mutant-folk, forest-psychedelics and acid-swashed voodoo experimentation, full of wide-eyed vision and playfulness.