Striking a Balance

It’s very difficult for musicians to strike a balance between experimental and enjoyable, making an album that is both cutting edge and has a solid place in the CD rotation. The newest album from Numbers, We’re Animals, is as close as most bands will get, showing a great amount of growth on their part.Numbers used to be a seemingly unsure group of musicians trying to find their niche. Animals is the culmination of all of their hard work and effort, hammering the group’s sound into an accessible form. It’s like a fusion of many different bands and sounds; the punk of Bikini Kill, grunge of Nirvana, silly youthfulness of Moldy Peaches, and simple, experimental electronic melodies of Broadcast.

Though the first two tracks are fairly mundane and uninspiring, the instrumentals thankfully kick it up in “The Fuck You Garage.” This song and others like “Funny but Sad” and “Solid Pleasure” utilize the heavy bass of the keyboards. “Funny…” is also quite ambient and chill; a more refined song than that of “Time Story.” However, even if Animals is Numbers’ most together album, it is still patchy. Most of the songs are either too discordant or monotonous and haven’t quite found that level ground that the others are so close to on this record.

Numbers has obviously been working very hard to make their style unique and coherent, achieving that necessary equilibrium between their funky experimental vibe and something that the public can identify with. The effort is well worth it, even though it’s not completely polished. If they continue on in this way the next piece should yield even greater results.