A Mexican indie band with a divisive vocalist…
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[6.38]
Juana Giaimo: Hello Seahorse’s slow change from twee to melodrama was effective, especially because of Lo Blondo’s deep grief in her languid cries. Bu, being this the third album in which they’ll explore this style, it may be losing some of its intensity. While in the delicate verses Lo Blondo is desoalted and yearning, the chorus, aiming to be passionately forlorn, falls quite flat.
[6]
David Sheffieck: Those guitars suggest summer by way of Flock of Seagulls, and if the vocalist is a bit too icy to do the same — especially in the hook — she’s still more than able to pull that hook off with aplomb.
[6]
Micha Cavaseno: It’s like a jigsaw of tedious indie clichés, topped off by a fairly typical vocal performance trying to sound like a siren, when everything is mixed so aggressively I’d more likely compare it all to a bunch of klaxons.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: Echoes of nearly everything I love(d) about straight-ahead ’80s college pop-rock can be found in “Animal”: there’s some “Bring on the Dancing Horses,” some Smiths, a bit of the Sundays (especially thanks to Denise Gutiérrez’s vocals, which soar even while singing a fairly dark set of lyrics, cf. my much-missed National Velvet). Yet it still sounds contemporary.
[9]
Jer Fairall: A singer with of the chirp and squeak of Missing Persons or the Motels, and a band that wisely accentuates the underlying melancholy of her vocal by recalling that the best New Wave was as much about gloomy undercurrents as it was about shiny surfaces. So pretty that I barely notice that there isn’t really any chorus.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Lo Blondo milking the chorus is the real treat here; it’s a little like the Def Leppard chorus of the same word, but with wonder and sadness instead of just wonder. There’s a tenderness to the electric piano beds and a nice meandering quality to the delay-heavy solo.
[7]
Will Adams: Some good ideas floating about — namely that shimmery chorus — that are ultimately buried by cheap production and an incongruous vocalist.
[5]
Alfred Soto: The guitar solo has the right liquidity, and the rhythm track looks backwards to ’80s college mainstays. The problem is Denise Gutierrez, whose tone and range haven’t thawed in years.
[6]