Animal Flag - Void Ripper (2018)

Even though Animal Flag have been making music since 2009, it’s best to think of the Boston-based band’s new album, Void Ripper, as a beginning rather than a continuation.

For starters, it’s the first release from the band’s current lineup but perhaps more importantly, it’s another entry in Animal Flag’s continual reinvention. “I tend to think of music and the music I’m apart of as an album-by-album endeavor,” frontman Matthew Politoski says. “Each one is its own thing that creates a universe.”

Heavily influenced by folk artists like Sufjan Stevens and David Bazan, Politoski’s meditative musical voice gives Void Ripper an introspective aura that counters the heavy rock influences of his bandmates. To that end, the album is all at once intimate and expansive, booming alternative rock often shrouded in dark undertones and the occasional electronic flourish but colored with introspective soul-searching themes.