Kevin Bronson on November 21st, 2011

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Just an Animal’s debut album “Lonely Hunter” (out Tuesday) marks a radical turn for the Los Angeles quartet formerly known as Red Cortez, and it’s almost all for the better. Gone is the self-conscious, guitar-heavy rock ’n’ soul of the foursome’s early recordings, which (first under the name the Weather Underground) produced a series of EPs and some DIY releases but never a full-length album. In its place, Harley Prechtel-Cortez, Ryan Kirkpatrick, Diego Guerrero, and Calvin J. Love have found an organic, spacey take on soul-pop that broadens the quartet’s sonic palette and injects some out-and-out fun into the proceedings without compromising Prechtel-Cortez’s lyrical mission to tackle some meaty subject matter. (Here’s hoping the album artwork includes said words.) The single “Kamikaze” glides on the singer’s falsetto and a hazy synth line, twinkling its way to the seemingly de rigeur (these days) whoo-hoo chorus, which might be objectionable if it weren’t so catchy. Elsewhere on the album, though, the distinct touches of producer Richard Swift reveal themselves. Just An Animal recorded “Lonely Hunter” this past spring at Swift’s Oregon outpost, which must be like working in a lo-fi funhouse. “Lonely Hunter” has some of the qualities of an old cassette being subjected to ravenous tapeheads, but it’s never boring and except for a couple of moments that sound simply dashed off (“Ghost in the Machine”) it’s 30 minutes that shows a different, looser side of the quartet’s animal instincts.

||| Download: “Kamikaze”

||| Live: Just an Animal celebrates the release of “Lonely Hunter” on Tuesday at the Satellite, where they will play the album in its entirety.

||| Previously: The backstory and the “Bomb” demo.