Animal Hospital
SIPS-002
Shelf Life
LP/digital Nov 03, 2023
“I would start with calling it a rock record.”
So says Kevin Micka about Shelf Life, the vibrant, multifaceted new album from his ever-evolving vehicle for musical exploration, Animal Hospital. At first glance, it’s a claim likely to rouse skepticism: clocking in at 35 minutes, the four songs of Shelf Life are wordless and full of alien textures with nary a verse, chorus, or bridge to speak of. But sit with Micka’s take while the needle drops on “Fuselage” and his cryptic intent will surely reveal itself. After all, what’s rock music but a melting pot anyway? In The Last Waltz, Levon Helm said something to the effect of “country, bluegrass, blues music, show music: put them in a room, let them dance together and you get something new and exciting.” The music of Shelf Life functions the same way, just with modern ingredients. There are riffs, after all, but those expecting Led Zep songs can seek those on the other pole of this planet.
Micka came up in the Boston music scene as a member of post-rockers The Common Cold, alongside his brother Sean, and the invented-instrument juggernaut Neptune. He became further entrenched in the back-of-house too, establishing himself as an in-demand recording engineer for local bands, a sound engineer for the long-running Non-Event experimental concert series, and as a reliable instrument repair tech. These experiences and skills were crystalized in Animal Hospital, which started as a solo project in order to tour in a less burdened way. With Micka controlling a collection of electronics, effects, mixing consoles and delay units, he patiently constructs a layered nest of phrases and patterns consisting of live drum beats, guitar chords, scrapes, chimes, and flickering melodies. After three acclaimed full-lengths as Animal Hospital within this sandbox, Micka began a job as guitar tech for Yo La Tengo, which he held for a decade. Micka recalls “Working with Yo La Tengo, watching their range of compositions over the years or just through a single setlist, I started thinking that Animal Hospital didn’t have to be just one thing.”
Shelf Life would not exist without The Box, a 19” x 10” x 6" chassis Micka built containing the aforementioned electronics as a means to streamline touring. During its creation, he added features like percussive switches, a contact mic, and an unmute button, turning The Box into an instrument in and of itself. Its creation signaled a shift, and soon Micka began composing and performing in a different, unencumbered way: “I became less concerned whether I could pull these off in a live setting on my own. Nothing needs to be definitive and everything can and should be reinterpreted and continue to live on in a new and different life. Some tracks continued feeling best in a solo context, even more deconstructed than my early material, but at the same time, I thought bigger.” The Animal Hospital Ensemble was introduced in 2011, and saw Micka conducting for upwards of thirty musicians that play on the perimeter of venues, recreating the components of his compositions with the audience encircled. When ensemble performances weren’t feasible, Micka brought Ernie Kim and Frank Aveni into the fold, allowing greater room for variance and improvisation as a trio. In turn, these variations informed his recordings, like a positive feedback loop.
Through the 2010s, Micka composed and recorded for Animal Hospital in concentrated bursts with assistance from Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets, whose name you’ll find on records from Battles, The Hotelier, Lingua Ignota, and more. “A lot of my work takes a long time to come to a sense of completion,” admits Micka. “It takes some effort to let go and get perspective or distance from the work in order to re-engage with it.” In 2020, a collection of Micka’s self-described deconstructed compositions from this time arrived as Fatigue, a brooding soundtrack if there ever was one for the global pandemic’s onset. That doesn’t quite make Shelf Life the bright poppy yang to Fatigue’s yin, nor does it make it Fatigue’s b-sides, but back to Micka’s original statement: it unquestionably rocks.
Unlike all previous Animal Hospital records, Shelf Life storms out of the gate with immediacy. ”Fuselage” literally picks up where Animal Hospital left off, built off a few measures of floor toms from a live show, which soon create a rhythmic playground for breakbeats, crackling electronics, a student-model Sears Silvertone, and Micka’s reverberating yodel. At its finish arrives a ferocious electric guitar that would make Prince proud. On “Awful Beast,” Micka builds the subject from the ground up, starting with the sound of marching hooves before moving onto its breath, sculpting aural bones, muscle, and flesh on top of one another until the creature is alive and seething. “His Amazing Friends,” which encompasses nearly all of Shelf Life’s backside, plays out like a marching band slowly but furiously careening off the rails. Tension is built and destroyed twice throughout its 16+ minutes, pushing the sonic envelope in each cycle. “As Always” functions as the album’s coda, a gentle counterpoint to everything heard on Shelf Life. Instead of an intensely labored recording, “As Always” is a single take of Micka’s improvisations while testing out a newly repaired amp, captured on his field recording device.
Within Boston’s ever-shuffling musical universe, Micka and Animal Hospital have been a constant, his music versatile and flexible enough to share stages with the likes of The Jesus Lizard, Lambchop, Beirut, No Age, Os Mutantes, Codeine, Sō Percussion, and so many others. A dozen years in the making, Shelf Life arrives like a celebration of Micka’s Animal Hospital project, serving as The Most Animal Hospital Record to date and also a gateway into the project’s universe for the uninitiated. Play it loud.