ALBUM REVIEW: SELOFAN - "Animal Mentality"

Release date: April 10, 2024

Influences: Cold wave, Post-punk, Dark wave

The Greek act's thematics remain anchored in death, melancholic love, and unfulfilled desire on their seventh album in order. Across eight tracks, the Athens-based duo crafts yet another hauntingly cinematic world, balancing raw emotion with meticulous musicality.

The opening track "Sticky Fingers" directly sets an ominous overall tone. It tells the story of a young couple’s dreamlike road trip to the Alps that — whisky-warmed and Joy Division-scored — ends in tragedy. The crash is both sonic and narrative, with swirling synths and reverberating beats mirroring the chaos, culminating in a heart-wrenching climax of grief and loss.

Formed in 2012 by Joanna Pavlidou and Dimitris Pavlidis, the duo masterfully blends influences from cold wave, dark wave, and post-punk. Ethereal synths, pulsating bass, and shimmering guitars create a signature sound imbued with deep emotional resonance. Joanna’s spectral vocals contrast with Dimitris’ stoic tones, and their interplay feels both intimate and volatile. Worth mentioning are also the two German-language tracks "Glassplitter" and "Ignoranz" that expand the album’s poetic depth further, heightening themes of isolation and longing.

The album holds an unrelenting grip on me, each track embedding itself deeper into my emotions. Worth mentioning here is "Sacrifice Me". It' not just a song; it is an unraveling, a slow descent into resignation. The weight of despair presses down on me, the numbing exhaustion creeping in like a silent tide. It is as if the music itself understands what it means to be lost in the fog of depression, where even sorrow becomes muted, a dull ache rather than a piercing pain. The restrained yet deeply atmospheric melodies don’t just play; they seep into me, lingering long after the final note fades.

Then comes "Bluebirds", and suddenly, I am suspended in the aching fragility of lost love. The simplicity of the melody is deceptive — it disarms me, catches me off guard, and before I know it, the song has carved itself into my heart. There is a raw, almost unbearable honesty in its portrayal of longing, a kind of sadness that doesn’t shout but instead settles in quietly, making its presence known long after the music stops.

Selofan’s signature saxophone sets them apart from other acts in the genre, its haunting cries cutting through dense synth layers with stark human vulnerability. Lush yet never overproduced, the album balances shimmering arpeggios, cavernous beats, and subtle ambient textures, leaving me suspended between beauty and desolation.

Animal Mentality is not just an album I listen to — it’s an album that happens to me. With this release, Selofan once again cements their position as one of the genre’s most innovative acts, capturing the fragile, bittersweet essence of the human condition with a rare, almost painful authenticity. For me, drawn to melancholic dreamscapes, this album is more than music — it’s an immersive, deeply affecting experience that etches itself into my very being. (Jens Atterstrand)

Animal Mentality comes both digitally, on cassette and as a digipak CD as well as on vinyl in four different colored editions with embossed covers and printed inner sleeves.

Support your scene and buy the album here.