I have to give credit where credit is due. I first heard of Rock Plaza Central after reading Pitchfork’s review and was intrigued. Had a hell of a time finding the album, but eventually tracked it down on Zunior.com, Canada’s indie music download haven.
At first I didn’t know what to make of Are We Not Horses. Essentially its a concept album about mechanical horses that are programmed to believe that they are real horses. Uh, okay… Throughout the course of the album, the robot horses give up on trying to figure out what they are and instead ride off toward the lights in the distance, hoping they will find their answers. The lights turn out to be nothing other than the stars, billions and billions of miles away. Fortunately the horses have no concept of time and thus experience no real sense of loss. In fact, because they were designed to run, they are elated to run forever.
Let’s just say this is a rather unique and brilliant album and leave it at that. There are some serious Neutral Milk Hotel and Will Oldham influences that are sometimes subtle, sometimes not. Chris Eaton, the architect of this beautiful clusterfuck of sound, has an immensly powerful voice. His delivery packs the wallop of a fiery minister, instilling fear and condemning you for not following his words. I found myself hanging on every word.
Are We Not Horses is not something you’re going to be able to wrap your head around at first listen. It wasn’t until I invested some time and really dug into it (three or four listens), that I became enamored with it. Now I can’t get stop playing it.
The unique sound is complete with horns, violin, glockenspiel, accordion, etc. The song that finally connected with me was “Anthem For The Already Defeated.” It begins with some subtle guitar work and some light piano before launching into their best impression of an oom-pah band. The rub is throughout the song. There is this hauting violin that collides beautifully with the upbeat horn and percussion. On top of it all are Eaton’s powerful lyrics puncuated by his exclamation, “We Can Not Be Defeated!” All of this packed in to barely two minutes of work. I must have played it five times in a row.
Each song on the album is brilliant in its own regard. Some songs are stripped to the bone while others are so layered and intricate that you find yourself stopping them midway through to start from the beginning. I know we just released our top 25 albums for ‘06, so this is a day late and a dollar short. It deserves to be near the top of the list.
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