La La Land

“The record is alive with a lush, symphonic sensuousness that recalls Of Montreal; it’s as layered and ornate as an origami crane, but as organic and effortless as the real feathered thing. While the songs are shorter and punchier than the seven-minute marathons of Parc Avenue … they’re complicated and gorgeous and feel as innate as desire itself.” – Paste

“Psychedelic, amplified and momentous, songs are multifaceted, with a sense of Radiohead importance, Arcade Fire intensity and très cool dirty-basement rock and roll (“American Idol” gets my vote as the missing link between Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street).” – The Globe and Mail

“utterly thrilling while stil retaining all the muted joy and gentle perfection of Parc Avenue … an album for the ages and Plants and Animals’ ultimate piece of work thus far” – Under the Radar

“rife with chiming bells, ebullient trumpet blasts, and whistled outros. It’s a bewitching record — a mix of soft-rock luster, classic-rock grit, and indie-rock dexterity — a sort of AM Gold for the dark-hearted.” – eMusic

“”By the time the amps stop ringing, you feel you’ve travelled through a cohesive, front-to-back, old-fashioned album, one that you probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn still got plenty of spins decades down the line.” – Blurt

Plants and Animals latest offering, La La Land, is louder, and tougher, but also showcases them their smoothest and most cohesive to-date. Inspired by a rediscovery of electric guitars, amplification and fuzz pedals, it takes us up and away from Parc Avenue’s Montreal-in-the-summer vibe, and out into the rock n’ roll ether. The album was recorded at the band’s hometown go-to studio in Montreal, The Treatment Room, and at Studio La Frette outside Paris—a brokedown old mansion filled with vintage gear and a killer board in the cellar instead of wine.

Though plenty of wine went into the album. As Warren puts it, “the Paris stuff is like a nice Bordeaux and the Montreal stuff is more like a baked potato. Sessions in Paris ended by 10pm, sessions in Montreal by 6am.” Rum and cokes inspired the initial Treatment Room sessions in late 2008. The album’s first track, “Tom Cruz,” eventually came out of these late nights. As the Woodman tells it, “it was December, pre-Christmas, so we fuelled the session with rum and cokes. They made us feel like Tom Cruise. It gave us killer smiles and made our enemies wither.”

Ultimately it’s this sense of hilarious confidence that currently characterizes Plants and Animals, and also gives La La Land its cohesion. The Woodman’s drums sound bigger and groovier, Nic colours the album with extra guitars and keyboards like a mad painter, and Warren’s vocals have taken even more ambitious strides.

“We got fat making the record but got skinny mixing it,” Warren jokes. After handing over album-mixing duties to someone other than Warren for the first time, the band decided they weren’t happy with the results, and camped out at the Treatment Room for two weeks in the fall of 2009 to remix the record. Warren even setup a tent in the studio, working around the clock to wrap things up. Many late nights and even more bad working titles later, La La Land was done.

In many ways La La Land is just as eclectic as Parc Avenue, but there’s something more mature holding it all together now. As they might say in the movies, La La Land isn’t a place—it’s a state of mind. Plants and Animals have never been a band with much interest in posturing or unnecessary theatrics, but on La La Land the curtain isn’t just pulled back, it’s gone entirely.