Secret City

With their third LP, Montreal’s Plants and Animals opted to take a more freewheeling approach to the way that they craft their music. Rather than hunker down in a sound room to build this record from the ground up as they had in the past, the band spent more time developing the 11 songs that comprise The End of That before heading to La Frette Studio outside of Paris to roll tape. And the upshot is their most organic, homegrown work to date – one that at times evokes aspects of The Dream Syndicate on shimmying tunes like the title cut and “Crisis!” and Shelter People -era Leon Russell on the rolling “No Idea.” However, couldn’t we have done without the already moldy two-New-Years-too-late kiss-off to 2010?