Zoos of Berlin
“Taxis”
Don’t Look About (available via Bandcamp)
Detroit-based Zoos of Berlin prefer to drop their albums out of the sky, like some mysterious sonic stork with a delivery of music.
I think of them less as a traditional band and more of a collective of talented musicians hiding in the dark, quietly creating compelling, genre-defying music and releasing it when they’ve got a goddamn minute in this busy-ass world, OK?
And I’m totally all right with that, because this latest batch absolutely rips. This out-of-nowhere offering is called Night Tables, posted up on the band’s Bandcamp page with no notice.
I’m glad I caught this one. I probably would’ve missed the last one if they hadn’t mailed a copy of the LP to my desk at work. Thanks, Zoos of Berlin!
Let’s be clear. Night Tables is a notebook of well-structured, one-off ideas for songs that likely didn’t fit elsewhere, or are simply left best as tracks under two minutes. There are some longer offerings here, but most songs are brisk lil’ bangers.
I say that as an ultimate compliment. There’s nothing here that will waste your time; you’ll wish you had more of that scrap of an idea.
Consider this a mixtape of airy, spaced-out music rooted somewhere in the archives of whatever “indie rock” used to be. It also pulls in some dub elements, some sprinkles of techno and other subgenres of electronic music (imagine if you went to a rave once but got the gist), and lots of ambient space in between with disembodied vocals floating in here and there to guide you through Night Tables.
This all makes it tough to single out a song. You should really hear this thing together, because it’s quite a lovely ride through Zoos of Berlin’s notebook of song ideas, but I’ll pick “Taxis” as a strong gateway drug.
It feels as fluid as anything on King Krule’s 6 Feet Beneath the Moon, which often has a vague “you could call this a song if you wanted to” vibe. The texture, sound, and delivery of “Taxis” sounds like it could’ve landed on Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest or Shields albums. For a more contemporary musical reference, there’s a similar disregard for genre on Tara Clerkin Trio’s excellent Somewhere Good album. There’s a lot of shoegaze and grunge-like elements that recall Chicago-based Slow Pulp’s latest album Melodie.
“Taxis” (which is, weirdly, the second song they have in their catalog called that) and the rest of Zoos of Berlin’s Night Tables proves that there’s a lot of different ways to be a band and to release an album in 2026. Without going through the normal mechanics of releasing something new and without even coming across like a band at all, Zoos of Berlin remain one of the best bands in Detroit, making some of its most interesting music and bolstering their catalog yet again with Night Tables.
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