Animal, Surrender!

WFMU DJ Scott Williams presents Animal, Surrender! live from Monty Hall Sunday, September 28, 5pm - 6pm on

Tune in to Radio Row or drop by Monty Hall in person, but don't miss this one.

A large selection of Records CD’s and Swag will be available for purchase.

All proceeds support WFMU

WFMU Radio’s Monty Hall, located at 43 Montgomery Street in downtown Jersey City (mere steps from the Exchange Place PATH station).

Back in 2023, bassist Peter Kerlin (Sunwatchers, Chris Forsyth Solar Motel Band, Bent Arcana, Everloving) and drummer Rob Smith (Gray/Smith, Rhyton, Pigeons) ritualistically burnt their passports, ate the ashes, and began conspiring together under the new guise of Animal, Surrender! 

Kerlin's spidery and melodious playing on his 8-string electric bass expands the expected language of that instrument into terrain more often inhabited by lutes or pianos, and begs to interweave with a drummer who slyly punctuates and propels against the grain. The duo's often wordless music is spun from threads of lost folksongs and polyrhythms into hypnotic, latticework compositions, melodies and beats shifting like cat's-cradles strung between their constantly moving hands.

Their eponymous debut on Ernest Jenning Record Co. in 2024 found haunting covers of Nick Drake and Mike Wexler lurking in a tangle of lean, progressive compositions crafted with the terse economy of post-rock but a pastoral, kaleidoscopic vision in its eyes. 

Their forthcoming album, A Boot for Every Bane (2025 EJRC), builds upon the incantatory language of the first while inviting the mercurial talents and instincts of pipe organist Curt Sydnor (Greg Saunier, Yonatan Gat, Peni Candra Rini) into the magick circle.  

From historic St. John's Church in Richmond, VA where Patrick Henry challenged the young nation to give him liberty or give him death, Sydnor's organ breathes charged air to help the group coax out troubled spirits buried deep in the American dirt for a spiritual reckoning.  Along with many new compositions that advance their original cause, they resurrect and reanimate several old American standards: the seductive and sub-tropical Poinciana made famous by Ahmad Jamal's trio, and the untraceable river song Shenandoah, known from deep renditions by Belafonte, Dylan, and Tony Rice to name but a few.

When the animal catches its own distorted reflection in the rolling river, what is left to do but surrender to the song?

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