Bored Animal

Conceived and recorded live in under two weeks at Edwyn Collins’ studio in the Highlands of Scotland, with engineer Sean Reed and mixed by David Wrench (Manic Street Preachers, Let’s Eat Grandma, Blur, Baxter Dury), for Bored Animal His Lordship decided to streamline their sound—forgoing things like harmonies, a rockabilly influence, and songs over four minutes long—and didn’t worry about making the music perfect.

The resultant album crams multiple ideas into its 11 concise songs. On opening title track, clanging guitars and drums rattle the speakers before the song takes off like a screaming bottle rocket. From there, guitarist/vocalist James Walbourne and drummer Kris Sonne race through ferocious songs with clever lyrics, which lean into scorching rock ‘n’ roll (the abrasive ‘Old Romantic’, needling ‘Downertown’), distorted punk (the ramshackle ‘Marc-Andre Léclerc’), tornadic noise rock (‘Weirdo in the Park’), throttling garage-blues riffs and feral howls (sub-three-minute ‘The Sadness of King Kong’), and even psychedelic fantasias (‘Derek E. Fudge’).

As with their debut, Bored Animal makes room for an instrumental (the album-closing Western noir ‘Gin and Fog’) and Sonne contributes lead vocals to a track (the aforementioned ‘Derek E. Fudge’). And while Bored Animal’s songs take cues from vintage rock ‘n’ roll, the album is decidedly not a retro rehash or homage to the past.

When His Lordship make music, their mighty, rambunctious roar emerges naturally, realizing that to leave something that’s a mistake is where the magic is. More than anything, His Lordship embrace the idea everything is fleeting, so the best way to live – and make music – is to seize the day, trust their instincts and aim to deliver on the promise of early rock’n’roll: in and at ‘em songs which do not outstay their welcome, just leave the listener viscerally thrilled, confused and hungry for more. Bored Animal delivers on that promise.