Brightest Young Things

Editor's note: Today's feature was supposed to be my (hopefully) funny interview with Holy Fuck, before their RNR show tonight, but after a few false phone starts and them failing to return the email questions in time, we had to regroup.

AND FOR THE BETTER, IF YOU ASK ME.

We don't often get a chance to do this, just be excited about something, without a show, or a DC based purpose, and even rarer is the occasion when we get to splatter our excitement over our feature banner. But today is that day. Ta-Dah.

This isn't and interview, or a listening party or any other standard issue feature format.
(though those may come)
This is just me sitting down, playing you some music and telling you JUST WHY AND HOW AMAZING THIS BAND "PLANTS AND ANIMALS", you may or may not have heard of, IS.

And, because you trust me, or are bored at work, or both, you'll read it.
Deal?
Deal.

First up feast your ears on this: Nice huh? So, a few weeks a go, I posted an mp3 for this song ("Bye, Bye, Bye") in my picks of the week (which I know no one but Cale and two other people read) and said: Thankfully NOT an ‘N Sync cover band, Plants & Animals come off an the spawn of Animal Collective and Arcade Fire, and that means that any second now, Pitchfork and Stereogum will fall desperately in love with them, and create buzz so deafening the backlash will be inevitable. So, enjoy this while you can.

And lo and behold, I was right!!!
Just see here and here.
And you know why I was right? Because this music, in all its symphonic pop glee is soooooooooo sosososooooooooo good that there was no way people were not going to hear it and love it.

here listen to some more:

Man.
Right?

And it is a miracle I ever even listened to them in the first place. Because, God knows Plants and Animals tried to put me off.
The things they had going against them were:

-Emusic went ahead and described them as a "jam band" (INSTANT gag reflex)
-to add insult to injury they actually had some 7 min+ long songs
-one of which was named "Faerie Dance" (now, I love a renaissance fair as much as the next glutton, but come ON!)
-they're from Canada (loving bands from Canada is at this point like loving bands from Sweden-predictable and so 2005)
-no one knows quite how to describe them so somehow everyone from Neil Young to Coldplay to Blitzen Trapper (to my own "very original" Animal Collective and Arcade Fire (sometimes, I make myself sick with my own unoriginality) get brought up)
-they look like goddamn hippies
and
-the album name is "Parc Avenue", which is a horrible enchanted forrest/Quebecoise/US pun.

All signs pointed to me running away (I mean, I only have 100 emusic credits a month after all) and yet I bit
Hard.
Each song, my friends is good.
Its probably better than good but ...
Each song employs, in a refreshingly non-overbearing way (as some of those bands they keep being compared to, lets face it, are), everything from brass sections to piano etides to choruses of small children singing in angelic voices to choruses of insane proportions, interspersed with spine-tinglingly intimate folky moments.

Goddammit, it does feel like faeries dancing every once in a while in there:

It is so good that I am obsessed.
I sent it to Cale, and within 3 songs, he was obsessed too.
Christina saw them at SXSW and she is obsessed as well.
You're next.

My personal favorite is "Good Friend" though, so listen to it:

I am purposefully not streaming "New Kind of Love" (a delicate little ballad with big BIG orchestrals) and the aforementioned "Faerie Dance" because hey, you need something to look forward to.

There are no DC or DC vicinity dates as of yet, but continue stalking their myspace for touring details
i know I will.