Daily Jam - Spirit Animal

2009 was kind of whirlwind year for me. I turned 30. It was my first year of marriage and the year my dad died. My first year in a new home with my wife. It was the last time the Longhorns were any good (until now finally), and the beginning of the Saints’ Super Bowl run. It was the year I started blogging. The year I spent many a weekend in the car driving back and forth to Grand Prairie, Texas to check in on my mom. It was a year that I saw tons of live music and bought even more. To be honest, even though I had always bought a lot of records and such, the hunt and procural thereof became a form of catharsis for me in 2009. After losing my dad, it filled up more and more of my time, and to this day, can still give me a weird sense of euphoria when I finally discover something on my want list.

And man, did I get a bunch of great stuff.

Aside from their numerous solo ventures, Steve Moore’s and Anthony Paterra’s Zombi has become a favorite project of mine ever since 2009, and the duo’s third proper full length LP Spirit Animal. Hyped on many of the different music blogs and websites I was reading at the time, the record was a wonderful hybrid of spacey prog rock and blaring analog synthesizers, perfectly encapsulated on the epic, 15-minute album opener and title track. Playing like some alternate, unused score from Romero’s (RIP) Dawn of the Dead, an unearthed Goblin B-side, or the house music for the coolest planetarium ever, “Spirit Animal” is full of dramatic synths, pulsing, oozing bass, and ominous celestial tones. It feels like a story. It feels cinematic. If these guys weren’t already scoring films, I’d be urging them to with every breath.

Zombi still certainly hooks me with every subsequent release, but nothing quite like that first revelation. It soundtracked several of those aforementioned drives to visit my mom in '09, and in some ways, I would have been lost without them, as well as the hundreds of other artists that helped massage my soul.

Listen below, our Daily Jam.