Human Hand, Animal Band

This is the fifth recording by the Austin group, stepping out from the mottled crevices of their local underground to join up with GSL. On the record, ROBL employed the help of Peter Stopchinski, a noted Austin composer and arranger/deconstructionist/humorist, to help flesh out their string and horn ideas. They also enlisted the help of Sarah and Leigh from the Tosca String Quartet, who at the time were in between tours with David Byrne. The listener may be tempted to categorize the music as “existential-rock,” but the record plays far too theatrically for such classification. 'Human Hand, Animal Band' creates a world where allegories come close to madcap; love may only be seen with 20/40 vision; teeth become microchips; friends pull you out of bed and float you down the Rhone River in drunken despair; and where the politics of friendship are simple enough to break into war, but complex enough to drive one into seclusion. For fans of Three Mile Pilot, Tarantel, Radiohead, and Pink Floyd.