My first time walking into a college library, I saw an army of headphones hunched over books and computers. I had never been one to listen to music while studying — the lyrics of popular songs and the flowing melodies of instrumental pieces would distract me from readings and transport me to places other than Wordsworth’s landscapes or Descartes’ meditations. I didn’t get the appeal. That is, until I first sat down with a book and a Men I Trust album — Oncle Jazz. The electronic, chill pop became a pillow upon which I could gently rest my head and calmly read. From there, I was hooked — the Québec City band became my trusted artist for studying, strolling around campus and getting ready in the morning. The effortless, happy vibe stuck with me, sparking extra excitement when I heard that they released their fifth studio album, Equus Asinus last Wednesday, March 19, 2025. The work had been announced a little more than a month earlier, on Feb. 11, 2025, with another album “from the same genus,” Equus Caballus, to follow. Both albums are set to be featured on their EQUUS tour of North America and Europe later this year. True to form, the album features the band’s signature sound — those whispering vocals and mystical melodies that initially pulled me in. Unlike their previous work, however, Equus Asinus strays from the pop genre, as a folk album that evokes a melancholic and retrospective feeling. With provocative, poetic lyrics and cascading melodies, the album beautifully reflects an unresolved attempt to come to terms with the past as change sweeps by.
Track 1 of 14, “I Come With Mud,” opens the album and gently sets the stage for the poetic world the band operates within. The beginning of the song is like a mellowed-down version of The 1975’s “About You” — take a listen to both and compare; it’s super cool how similar the two really are. Relatively quickly, the song ventures past its musical connection to “About You” and becomes a unique and earthy expression of the singer’s own flaws, her “mud.” The album continues, rolling forward through every song at a languid, but steady pace — like the hands on a clock, moving slowly but purposefully. This is represented musically in many of the tracks, especially in “Frostbite” and “Unlike Anything” — two tracks in the front and back end of the album where vertically contemplative chords move horizontally, acting as pensive and forward-looking. The ideas of memory, the past and change is present throughout, as Emma Proulx, the band’s lead singer, wonders, “Was there more I could have done?” in “All My Candles.” Musical echoes sing her lingering regret that the past is now only memories and letting go is almost impossible. Interestingly, the album contains scattered biblical references to rebirth, manifesting mostly in “Bethlehem,” “Heavenly Flow” and “Burrow.” These fit within the sphere of the album, as the predicament of time always moving suggests that rebirth is frequent, and people are never the same as their past selves.
My favorite of the album, the last two tracks — “Moon 2” and “What Matters Most” — are gentle instrumental outros, allowing listeners to fully reflect on the heavy, rainy-day album they just experienced. The former is numbing; it is nostalgia in music, giving no solution to the tensions present in the album. “What Matters Most” comes out of the fog of its predecessor, offering a carefree piano melody alongside synthetic strings that make you feel like everything, though unsolved and confused, is alright. The emotional path the album leads you through is a rough one. Though it is not full of twists and turns, its uniform melancholy is thick, making the last track especially relieving.
As a humanities major, the scientific meaning of the album name was initially lost upon me, so let me take a moment to refresh those of us not scientifically inclined. Equus asinus (with the correct capitalization of the first word and lowercase of the second) is the scientific name for the domestic donkey, written in binomial nomenclature, a system that features two Latin names to classify species. The first term is the animal’s genus, a taxonomic group between family and species, while the latter is the animal’s species. The two new EQUUS albums feature two different species within the same genus, the donkey (Equus asinus) and the horse (Equus caballus). Though sharing a genus, these animals cannot be more different. Semiotically, the donkey represents stubbornness due to its stoicism, while the horse is strong and heroic. Much of the common descriptions of donkeys match the sound that permeates the band’s new album. A stoic, resistance to change as it happens right in front of you is present in lyrics like “Should send for it, but it’s gone, don’t know where” in “I Don’t Like Music.” The whole album has these solitary, watching and reminiscing lyrics as change rolls past in the horizontal melodies. The semiotic associations of these animals stand in stark contrast, hinting at the sound we can expect for Equus Caballus — a more vibrant, uplifting spirit. After the reflective tone of Equus Asinus, that shift will be a welcome change.
Hazel Tjaden is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at hlt43@cornell.edu.
