New Animal

Known for their explosive live shows, Nerves capture that sweaty bravado in all its glory on their second album, NEW ANIMAL. Recorded the week of the "blizzard of '99" by warm-weather fan Jack Endino (Makers, Nirvana, Mudhoney), NEW ANIMAL is a Rock-n-Roll record. Braving Mother Nature's wrath, Jack and the Nerves made the cozy indoors steamy as they burned deep tracks in the frozen industrial terrain of Chicago’s West Side.

Whilst their self-titled debut was recorded and mixed in three days, and documents their boundless, runaway energy, NEW ANIMAL was recorded and mixed in a week. The additional time was needed for the new songs, whose high energy is corralled by greater dynamics. In a literal context, the word "love" appeared in the title of several cuts on their first album, while NEW ANIMAL boasts a darker, more sinister feeling. Such titles as "Die Tonight", "Dying Arms", "New Animal" and "Looking Into Fire", leave one to speculate about the personal lives of the band's members over the course of the last year. Musically the Nerves take cues from the raw pop of The Yardbirds and The Animals and the reckless abandon of Radio Birdmen and The Stooges. From the ominous drone kicking off "Die Tonight", to the grooves of electric piano and organ, courtesy of The Lonesome Organist (Jeremy Jacobsen) decorating a number of tracks, NEW ANIMAL resonates with a peculiar optical sound. Nerves' intense lean Rock-n-Roll isn't pretty, it isn't new, but like sex-when it's good you have to have it again and again