Posted on Animal Psi, August, 30, 2007:

Introductions are well past over, so let’s get straight to business: ‘All the Animals of the Forest’ is the newest long-player from Oklahoma’s totally fantastic and always enjoyable Anvil Salute. Following the thirty second thumb-pianoed intro “Intro”, “Shape to Endless Middle” breaks through with multi-part, sitar-vibrato guitars and percussion by the many hands of Vishnu, the full band regularly leaning back into a refrain nearly identical to the central theme of Lambchop’s ‘How I Quit Smoking’. Bumped-up from the regular AS cast of six to a platoon of nine, the album’s nine tracks share more than an uncanny aesthetic with the out-folk of Jackie-O Motherfucker; in addition, the social function of the music is contained in the unrestraint of the players, free to come and go within the song as we imagine they do the session, inverting the traditional cage of the recording booth into a limitless space of natural light and flocks of notes which travel to old age. Tracks like “Golden Spiral” and the unfortunately-titled “Hot Ham Water” are a grateful celebration of this fact, looping guitar-founded jubilees ala Jackie-O’s ‘Magick Fire Music’ plus central saxophone contributions recalling Do Make Say Think in the finest throes of ‘& Yet & Yet’. The darker tune “Abduction” follows a similar suit, possibly a tribute to the Sun City Girls, but for reference sake, much more akin to the post-rock semi-jazz of Tortoise. Indeed, the band’s tight, theme-based method does place them some where near the improvisation of jazz while still retaining the rock instrumental elements found in Thrill Jockey, etc. releases by the likes of Town and Country, Grails, or The Kingsbury Manx. “From One to One through One”, not to be confused with the similarly named Double Leopards work, is a calamitous (by comparison) raga busied by actual sitar, hand- and drummed-percussion, and locked into an even tighter spiral sans the special drive of a solo instrument. Following such indulgence, it is impressive they might restrict a piece like “What Todd Was Just Doing” to just one minute thirty: a minimal, far more nuanced piece of drum and acoustic with a rare focus on a diminished electric guitar, it could easily be expanded into a track four times its length, or as the band has chosen to do, use it as a build up to “Most Eloquent Combination of Letters”, a full-piece of similar focus on electric guitar noodling, glittering with chimes, the band never before as reminiscent of DMST and the cheerier side of Godspeed. It’s best that you know it going in, but the title-track finale is a 16 minute lead-out of sporadic percussion bursts, meandering guitar and other such strings – a slow-burning, fluttery raga that mounts a western nod in the back few, but ultimately wants to segue into your next great adventure. The timeless patina of the bold yellow jewel-cased cartoon art and absence of superfluous info places this disc anywhere in the last forty years, making it that much more of a classic.