House of Cosy Cushions Animal Dream

The video for Dublin band House of Cosy Cushions' song Palace for the Lost Ones, the title track from their debut EP, is about the best intro to their craft that one is likely to find. Rather than an amateurish, symbolic exploration of absurdist fantasy, I interpret it as a rigorous, unassailably documentary portrayal of what a typical Irish house party must look like to an outsider. Dancing nuns, evil court jesters, trombonists with demonically possessed eyebrows – it’s all in a night’s drunken revelry. There’s an expositional quality to this dark fairy tale of a film that calls to mind the recent “literal music video” fad. (During the line, “Tide of nuns strolling down the hall,” for instance, we see footage of line of nuns walking in the background as if during a processional. Well, at least it makes more sense than Total Eclipse of the Heart.) With its rambunctious, partly animated display of magical surrealism, this video is more than adequate preparation for just about everything that happens on the group's first full-length album Animal Dream.

The record starts off a bit dramatic. Somewhat like Nick Cave, singer/guitarist/songwriter Richard Bolhuis has a soft spot for the evocative, sometimes creepy, image (“I sew my heart into your soul”). Also like Nick Cave, he’s not that great of a singer, which is why it helps so much that he employs a lineup of talented female backing vocalists to buttress his wavering tones.

Further along, there is actually some danceable material on this record, depending on what kind of moves you’re willing to try. Animal Dream is a Flamenco-inspired bacchanal with a trombone solo that would fit in at a burlesque show, and what’s startling is that it works rather well.

There is an awful lot of trombone on this album, especially for an ensemble that does not involve Zach Condon. With most bands, the appearance of a trombone would be an anomaly – a brief, unrepeated tangent in an otherwise straightforward rock album – but with House of Cosy Cushions, the trombone is a defining element of the band’s personality. Just listen to the instrumental break during She Dances. Sure, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to have that wonderfully bright color in every song, but I am at least willing to throw my support behind any band that tries to increase the relevance of the trombone in a non-ska genre. Perhaps the band found the trombonist on craigslist (“Former high school marching band multi-instrumentalist seeks dreary, downbeat rock band”), but however it came about, I’m glad for it.

Because there are perhaps too many slow songs on the record, She’s Not Your Witch comes both as a highlight and a relief. The guitar attacks at full force, and the trombone really works on this song, as does the fiddle, which at one point provides a theme-from-Jaws-style half-step line to build the tension. Similarly, Good Old Love features a fiddle breakdown with melodic leaps that threaten to spin out of control. Animal Dream has a lot to offer in terms of musicianship, and it certainly boasts its share of nightmarishly strange sounds, some of which could inspire some videos even more freakish than the one for Palace. That reminds me, I have a party to attend. Hopefully, there will be a conga line of nuns.