It's easy to get excited about a new Selofan album. Since 2012, the Athenian duo have left their mark on us with a cold, theatrical style that borrows from gothic music as well as EBM, videos featuring elaborate imagery and a fixation on destructive relationships. Released in April this year, Animal Mentality is the band's seventh album, exploring different facets of human emotion and experience, from desire to the suffering of isolation - their usual themes!
Animal Mentality, on the other hand, quickly surprises us with its tempos and sounds. After the previous album, Partners in Hell, which was very neurasthenic and anxious (review), Animal Mentality return to faster tempos, but not in the way you'd expect: the violence and heaviness are mostly absent, and the drum machine strikes quickly and lightly. As for the synthesiser layers, they're less cold than usual for Selofan, evoking more brighter musics of the 70s and 80s, sometimes reminiscent of Jean-Michel Jarre, others of Depeche Mode. On the other hand, depending on the track, we find the despairing lyricism of Joanna's vocals or the bittersweet sadness of Dimitris', with lyrics mostly in English, with the exception of Glassplitter and Ignorans where German takes over - as on the previous album, there are no tracks in Greek this time. There's also that oppressive repetitiveness borrowed from industrial music, with a few noisy sounds alternating with the heaviness of the bass. This astonishing mix makes Selofan sound more than ever like a band from the 80s, at the crossroads of the whole of new wave!
We miss a little the theatrality of the previous two albums, which tends to be a little drowned out by the clearer synthesiser layers here, but Animal Mentality quickly grows on you thanks to some excellent tracks. The first of these, Sticky Fingers, is immediately appealing, beautifully cold and heartbroken, with its heady electronic loop and lyrics about death striking suddenly in the middle of a beautiful day; the beautiful video, shot in a single day in the snow-capped mountains above Athens, matches the music. On a different note, there's the gothic Sacrifice Me, whose lyrics and depressing bass ooze unhappiness and a sense of being broken and useless to others - reminiscent of friendly duo Lebanon Hanover. Fans of dance tracks and EBM sounds should take heart, however: even if it's not the dominant tone of the album, Love's Secret Game, with its binary rhythm expressing the irresistible mechanics of sexual desire, and Bluebirds, with its slower tempo and rougher sounds expressing abandonment, are also good value for money. Last but not least, Lucille may not be the most striking song on the album, but it too has been the subject of a fabulous video, in true Selofan expressionist style! Only the slightly excessive synthesiser layers make us cringe a little on Glassplitter, which exposes an unhealthy dependence on a disturbing personality. Ignorans, about the confinement of mutual misunderstanding, and the hopeful rebirth of Behind My Eyelids also bear witness to the band's usual mastery.
Animal Mentality is an album that delivers on its promise, taking us on a journey through many emotions, both good and bad, with the creativity, strength and sensitivity that are Selofan's hallmark.
