Kevin Bronson on February 5th, 2015

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With their transcendent 2011 album “Tamer Animals,” Oklahoma orchestral indie-rockers Other Lives placed themselves in rarefied air. Jaw-dropping both compositionally and lyrically, it’s not the kind of album that can be dashed off; indeed, the trio of Jesse Tabish (piano, guitar, vocals), Jonathon Mooney (piano, violin, guitar, percussion, trumpet) and Josh Onstott (bass, keys, percussion, guitar, vocals) don’t abide the typical “album cycle.” They’ve worked on the follow-up “Rituals” (due May 5 via tbd Records) for better than two years, relocating to Portland from their Stillwater home base and co-producing the album with Joey Waronker. Tabish calls the new album “about the spontaneity of travel and being isolated. For the first times in our lives we were moving off on our own away from our families and kind of coming into our own. I wanted the songs to reflect that new spirit.” He adds: “It was a long time spent searching for a new identity.” The haunting new song “Reconfiguration” suggests all that.

||| Stream: “Reconfiguration”

||| Previously: “Tamer Animals,” live at Coachella 2012, live at the El Rey, “Take Us Alive”

Photo by Emily Ulmer