We Animals – Lila Rose (Lila Rose Music) reviewed by Dave Franklin.

Despite, or possibly because of, being born with a condition that makes some natural sounds unbearable to listen to and others a more intense experience, Toronto-born Lila Rose has carved out a unique career making challenging and beautiful music. Unlike 2012’s Heart Machine, Rose opted for a less programmed and more traditional approach to making music and there is a darker, tribal heart to the songs as heavier, often industrial, beats act as the structure on which the more ethereal and sensitive elements can hang. The result is a mercurial mix of light and dark, driven rock sensibilities blending with more tangential and elemental musical experiments.

And within these exotic musical statements are equally poignant lyrical ones as the songs act as platforms for Rose to express her disappointment with mans treatment of the planet that is his home. When artists working in such green protest territory have traditionally been ranting, acoustic, eco warriors, dispensing less than subtle tirades to make their point, Rose offers a whole new form. For whilst the message is clearly available in the songs for those who wish to pursue it, musically it is wrapped in cascading strings, anthemic gloom-pop, industrial beats, gentle, meandering piano and banks of otherworldly choirs. The sound of Mother Earth’s pleas being channelled through a musical muse? Sounds like it to me.