- Flora Fauna is the third album by Melbourne band Footy. Apart from being an exercise in alliteration, it presents their first recorded outing as a trio with the new addition of multi-instrumentalist Evelyn Ida Morris contributing percussion, saxophone and keys. The addition promises a wide-range of new sonic possibilities for the primarily instrumental and keys-based band, and one that they’re apt to employ on this long-awaited record.
The album opens on Sober, an effortlessly atmospheric eleven-minute piece. Opening on a triumphant piano led post-rock feel with accents of cowbell, it suddenly shifts into a lengthy section of repetitive post-punky drumming and low percussive drones before dropping away into silence and sparse twinkling bells and celestial keys. A final, short upbeat section brings the piece to a satisfying conclusion. One is left with the sense of having completed a musical odyssey by the conclusion of the piece, but much more awaits.
Closer is a more straightforward track which rather than offering the juxtaposition of Sober, builds up a momentous, drifting jazz-rock feel, over time. We switch to dark washes of piano on Individuating, which is broken up by flourishes of saxophone and electric keys. The sax is a disruptive force delivering broken passages of dissonance which often dominate the otherwise subtle mix. The cohesive movement of middle section does way with it, and fairs much better with a tight xylophonic percussion beat locking into a propulsive interplay between dark washes of piano and high keyboard melodies, before a lengthy deconstruction of these elements follows it out to the track’s conclusion.
The confused monologue of Australian Animals seems unsure if it’s trying to be parody of or a sincere attempt at a personal reflection. Unfolding over an accompaniment of piano and occasional xylophone which does its best to capture the mood of contemplative confusion. The label states, that this is the most overtly political song the band has released, which is probably true of the mostly instrumental and subdued band, but rather than providing a political impetus to Flora Fauna, it’s more like the musical equivalent to being rambled at by an inarticulate, drunken stranger at the end of a big night.
Flora Fauna is a curious, strange and loosely connected album of disparate approaches. Throughout the record there’s a palpable tension between its disparate sections of music, some with a strong tendency toward repetition and texture, and others of an aimless freedom and discord. They have trouble sitting just right side-by-side in the shifting shape of the largely formless compositions and the overall mixed bag of musical ideas which fall back mostly on the sense of trained musicality of the performers, bearing just the frayed edges of experimentation. Sections of each track show promise and deliver captivating moments but they’re all too liable to drop away at the drop of a mallet in favour of another seemingly inconsequential idea.
- Jaden Gallagher.