Album Review - HUMAN NOISE - 'ANIMAL PEOPLE'
REVIEW BY: CARLA JAEGER
Photo Credit: AnnieRose Collis/Eddie Boyd
PRAISE FOR HUMAN NOISE
Colourful Shirt: “I was all in on this at the end, it's got power and mood and the build and pay off is right on the money.”
Declan Byrne, Triple j
Bad Language: “Good name for a band and it fits well with the world-weary grievances put into song here. I'm gonna stick around for more cathartic dust ups from Human Noise.”
Dave Ruby Howe, Triple j Unearthed
Bad Language: “There's a sense of urgency in the delivery and the songwriting felt strong and real. Had me reminded of acts like Ball Park and Boy & Bear at moments too. Nice one.”
Claire Mooney, Triple j
Colourful Shirt: “earnest, climactic and frenetic all in one. now that i think about it, that seems to be the M.O of human noise and it sure as hell makes for some good listening.”
Joe Khan, Triple j
“Bad Language is a follow up to their blistering 2020 single ‘How Is It You Do That’, a rollicking lo-fi tune with the punk-rock grit turned up to 11.”
FBi Independent Artist of The Week
March 2021
“One Time’ is a tense and steady climb towards a distant peak, centring on the one chugging chord.”
Music Feeds
Song You Need To Know: “One Time'' feels reminiscent of classic rock outfits such as Sonic Youth and The Strokes, albeit with a more modern feel, and sits effortlessly alongside recent tracks such as “Bad Language” and “Colourful Shirt”.
Rolling Stone Australia
“An uptempo melodic spray, with jangly guitars and an electric energy, ‘How Is It You Do That?’ has us salivating at the thought of ten more tracks from one of Australia’s best kept secrets.”
Life Without Andy
“There is something undeniably frenetic about the razor sharp songwriting of Sydney based indie-punk outfit Human Noise.”
Bittersweet symphonies blog (UK)
No album this year has made me ache to be back in the fiery pits of a beer-soaked mosh quite like Human Noise’s (formerly Boydos) Animal People.
The Sydney indie-punk-rock band, made up of Eddie Boyd, Monty Richmond, Josh Spolc and Clayton Allen, may have a new name, but they are as refreshingly self-effacing and witty as Boydos was celebrated to be.
Produced by Ben Edwards, the 10-track album captures the humour and humanity of angst, frustration, loss, anxiety and friendship. Many of the tracks are unsettling, matching the madness we can feel to life’s hardships.
Lead man Eddie could be dubbed, if I were to draw a perhaps eye-rolling comparison, the Jerry Seinfeld of punk lyrics. There is a clever irreverence to the lyrics; from the huntsman on the wall, to shouting at the cafe for charging an eftpos fee, to not having the time to meditate.
The album opens with Colourful Shirt, featuring a great bass line, which it loses as the song intensifies. The guitar builds to a terse, repetitive tension, though we never get to feel the release. It just builds and builds and builds, and then - so delightfully frustratingly, it ends.
Cut The Leash is a sad, antsy track, underscored by a guitar riff that feels somewhat reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s Money. It’s got groove and again builds to a thumping guitar solo so wonderful it induces head thumping that is almost guaranteed to lead to neck problems.
Flesh Wound is the song of acceptance, shaking off the pain of the past with that very self-effacing lyrical style.
Lou Reed’s influence here is palpable - with electric sounding spasms peppered throughout that remind me of the punk rocker’s most controversial album, Metal Machine Madness.
But no song demonstrates Reed’s influence quite like Hard To Know; melancholic and stripped-back, Boyd reflects on the end of relationship.
I’ll work on my confidence / And you’ll learn the clarinet / Finally we both have the time of day /But it’s hard to know that our love will go away.
Lyrically and sonically, it is the stand out of the album, heartbreaking in its honesty and powerful in its simplicity.
Overall, the vocals remain consistent over the course of the album, very much reminiscent of The Strokes’ distorted and compressed style. It works, though I couldn’t help but wish they had included some range, like the brooding, dark Jeff Buckley/Nick Cave-esque vocals we heard in So Easy from their debut album.
Overall, Animal People is fantastically produced, clever and powerful. Cohesive and distinct, it’s made me itch for more of Human Noise - or whatever name they choose to re-brand to next.
The long-awaited debut album from Sydney’s Human Noise is out in the world today. Released independently, ‘Animal People’ sees the band deep dive into topics of friendship, anxiety, self critique, relationships and love.
‘Animal People’ was predominantly produced by Ben Edwards (Julia Jacklin, Aldous Harding, Marlon Williams) with Blain Cuneen producing two tracks ‘The Will Of Others’ and ‘Animal People in Sydney. The album was mastered by Andrew Edgson with the rest of the songs recorded in The Sitting Room Studios, Lyettelton New Zealand.
“In January 2019 we flew to Lyttelton, NZ to record the album with Ben Edwards. Ben is a great producer and really fun to work with. We’d recorded our first album (released under Boydos) with him in 2017 and were very keen to work with him again. We stayed at the studio which has this amazing view of the Lyttelton Harbour. The daily schedule usually involved a slow morning with an 11 or 12 o’clock start and then we’d work late into the night. Once the instrumental tracking was done we’d go on these long drives around the NZ countryside in Ben’s van, trying to pick the right take for each tune. Once we’d picked the takes I spent a few days doing vocals and then we got stuck into overdubs and the little sprinkles on top.
Further down the track we recorded a couple more songs with our friend Blain Cuneen at his home in Belfield. Those two tracks are the most stripped back on the album and I think having that separation in how they recorded adds a nice point of difference.” Eddie Boyd, Human Noise
Sonically, the ten track album moves between shades of blistering guitars, frenetic drums and impassioned vocals from Eddie Boyd. It features singles’ Bad Language’, ‘How Is It That You Do That?’ ‘Colourful Shirt’ and new single ‘One Time’, which have all been supported by Triple j and Unearthed, FBI, and 2SER.
The video to current single ‘One Time’ perfectly complements the frenetic energy emanating from the song, with Boyd further adding, “both the lyrics and the music are kinda walking this tightrope that is always bound to give out.” Plus the uncertainty of 2021 meant the video was filmed in lockdown, “I got everyone to film themselves playing the song at multiple angles with their laptop cameras and then edited it together”.
‘Animal People’ will delight fans of indie-punk rock acts like Sonic Youth, RAT!hammock and The Strokes. “I definitely thought from the get go that it was going to be a break up album but it kinda became just as much about anxiety and friendship and self critique. I made the one year deadline with 10 songs. We ended up doing a little chopping and changing in the year that followed - I wanted to add a couple of songs and take a couple off. I’m really glad we spent the extra time getting it right. It’s the first body of work that I feel completely proud of and I can’t wait to share it.” Eddie Boyd, Human Noise
HUMAN NOISE TOUR DATES
Friday, November 5, Stag and Hunter, Newcastle tickets
Thursday, November 25 The Vanguard, Sydney tickets
Friday, November 26, Beaches, Thirroul free show
Wednesday, December 8 Small Time, Melbourne free show
Thursday, December 16, Lalala’s, Wollongong tickets
Thursday, January 20 The Retreat, Melbourne tickets
Thursday, January 27 Sideway, Canberra free show
Album: ‘Animal People’ is out now on all streaming platforms!.
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