Mos Ensemble Pets & Therapy

Since its debut in 2019, Kobe Boon's mòs ensemble has turned into an eight-piece band guided by a collective vision, with a preference for areas where genres overlap or cease to matter, where rich arrangements of voices and other instruments become fully realized. The band members are active with an impressive list of bands and projects - in pop, jazz and remote areas -, and relinquish this broad-mindedness with a self-evident love for adventure and exciting interaction. The result is a collective in continual transformation, maintaining a balancing act between wonder and determination.

Pets & Therapy is the sound of a band still honing its sound, refusing to settle for a formula. Not because they're trying to adapt to the whims of the day, but because their inner urges compel them to. It's spellbinding to witness how this octet has managed to refine its art while keeping that sense of unpredictable discovery intact. If anything, the ongoing tension between apparent contradictions is what makes their third album such a winner.

Recorded in the spring and fall of 2022 in Ghent and Milan, Pets & Therapy boasts eleven songs instead of seven like its predecessors Limbs (2019) and Behind The Marble (2022). It is at once more compact and nimble, as well as more elaborate and ingenious, the separate parts of the bands merging more fluently while keeping their distinctive individual identities intact. Just observe the way Roos Denayer, Astrid Creve and Marta Del Grandi have perfected their vocal arrangements, combining the gently alluring with the boldly experimental. They function as a mini choir, a three-headed siren ensemble with distinct, yet delightfully connected voices.

The same can be said about the instrumentalists and the band as a whole. They dare to contrast fragile introspection with outward exploration and exuberance, breaking down barriers with glee and guts. By now, labels like pop, jazz and chamber music hardly matter anymore. mòs ensemble became a band that swiftly switches from light-footed energy to dense drama, from dreamy fragility to punkish power, from melancholia to euphoria, and from the direct to the whimsical.

Vocals, reeds, guitar/mandolin, keyboards, bass and drums function as colors in a canvas showing how we never cease to think, feel, watch and interpret. It's a familiar story, aboutpeople trying to make sense of themselves and their place in the world while being connected to others, but you rarely get it presented with this combination of imagination, prowess and a sense of collectively shared vision. Pets & Therapy is also the sound of a band reaching a new artistic peak.