animal collective

2009 and 2013 were the only years they didn't tour an album or two ahead. and tbf, there were still a lot of surprises in the way they re-arranged old songs to fit the MPP and Centipede style.

the 2013 show was v. good. father time was way better live iirc

listening to this right now on moka's recommendation

xp Yeah! I saw their re-scheduled show in DC on December 1, 2013. Father Time finally clicked. The Live at 9:30 album is great, too. The Centipede show really benefits from soundboard mixes. I remember listening to an audience boot of the first Centipede show in April 2011 and thought they had lost it. Just a total mess. After one full listen, I think the new one is much better than Centipede.

I think it's as good as Centipede, but those albums are trying to do two completely different things

this album is very short

only two minutes shorter than strawberry jam

i lost track of this band years ago but if i love Floridada should i check out the rest of it? i assume so but i am bored and this blank box was in front of me.

yes! hocus pocus is even better

it's definitely an improvement over centipede hz & all the solo albums after MPP, but it's still a step below their peak. the backlash feels disproportionate but i guess for anyone who wasn't sold on them years ago or has since tired of their sound this would be very easy to hate.

the burglars is thrilling, definitely my favourite on this.

quietus review leads like a long bout of clinical projection. dude might need to see someone about that

They played Alvin Row for the first time ever last night.

Which songs are Panda Bear's? So far I have:
Hocus
Bagels
Golden Gal

Bagels and Golden Gal are definitely Avey songs from what they've said in interviews, but it's harder to tell here because there's even more vocal interplay than usual

Oh wow!

Trying hard not to make the Lennon McCartney comparison because that's already been suggested right?

I think it works. Panda = Lennon, Avey = McCartney. At least lyrically. Avey's songs have a lot of rich imagery and characters, while Panda's are pretty straightforward internal/emotional.

Hmm. I was thinking the opposite actually. Panda seems to emphasize melody and Avey the performance. But I really don't know the band all that well so.

Musically it's vice versa, but it's not as clear cut as their lyrics.

"Bros" is a "How Do You Sleep?"-level dig at the rest of AC for their reaction to Panda moving to Portugal.

This is pretty good. Better than the Panda Bear solo by a good mile or so. Not sure what the reviewers are listening to ... without the Animal Collective name they'd probably be calling it "brilliant weirdo avant pop".

So, whatcha think about it Treeship?

Animal Collective's peak critical / cool period was 2004-2009, right? ie. about a decade ago? You are never as uncool as you are 10 years after your peak. They're approaching their cool trough.

I'd been hearing this phenomenally irritating faux-jaunty song for the past week or so, had been assuming it was a side-project by some dreadful arse-end Britpop band, looked it up and was actually quite satisfied to discover it was 'Floridada' by Animal Collective.

Doing a bit of writing on japanese genre-cinema, now I can't stop humming 'shomin shomin shomin shomin shomin-geki. shomin-GEKI, shomin-GEKI' It really is quite catchy.

lol wtf @ the quietus http://i.imgur.com/0KFi7iN.png

What do we think of the single ?

haha i think it's a right of passage to hate this band at some point

What do we think of the single ?

― calstars, Friday, March 25, 2016 6:14 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Grip Gnop" (Avey) is great, should've been on the album, might've gotten cut because it's sort of similar to "Floridada." The b-side "Hounds of Bairro" (Panda) is a b-side for a reason. I think it's a holdover from PBVSGR.

*Gnip Gnop

this is so squelchy

#squelchiestnewmusic

So, whatcha think about it Treeship?

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, February 22, 2016 11:05 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry for the delay. this is rad. i don't like the title or album art but the actual songs are just awesome

Deakin, folks

Sleep Cycle is quite nice, much better than the last two AC albums

glad i finally got to hear "Loch Raven" and "Bees" live tonight. really good show. glad i'm seeing them again in November- they played about 3/4 of the new LP but not "Recycling," probably my favorite of all the PB vox-hocketing songs...

gnip gnop
lying in the grass
spilling guts
on delay
the burglars
vertical
daily routine
jimmy mack (cover)
alvin row
summing the wretch
floridada
---
bees
loch raven
golden gal

gnip gnop was a great opener. alvin row has always been a white whale for ac fans and the fact that they've been playing it at every show this year is neat but it's only one part of the 12-minute suite, the "dear alvin" section toward the end. loch raven and bees were so beautiful. lying in the grass and on delay stood out among the new songs that hadn't already clicked for me. i thought spilling guts and summing the wretch were different songs. floridada is the new peacebone as far as crowds are concerned. love the way avey slurs the chorus live. the cover was whatever i would've rather heard another song from painting with. daily routine, i feel like i've seen them play that at 4 of the 6 shows i've gone to, great song nonetheless... if i lived in DC i would double dip and go again tmrw...

vertical rules

can't believe i'm saying this but Stereogum commenter OTM:

Animal Collective got popular during George W. Bush's administration. They literally put out their first album in 2000 and followed it up with an even more oblique album in 2001. They were a radical alternative to what would eventually be the uber-patriotic post-9/11 America.

Their music was attractive because it offered a very distinct escape. "Pride & Fight" was only ever released on a live album because during the early 2000s, Animal Collective couldn't be bothered with repeating themselves. They weren't alone, but based on this performance, you can see that they had a very unique way of distancing themselves from the pack.

Believe it or not, performances like this was what made them a common name in the indie-sphere of 2004. This band that wouldn't even play their recorded/released songs live was something many of us desperately needed. At a time of unfortunate stagnation, here's a band constantly shifting with no regard to needing extreme acceptance.

Just as A.J. highlighted in the Killer Mike thread, old Radiohead seems to be hauntingly apropos right now. It's the same reasoning AnCo felt the need to whip out this 2001/2002 gem from their deep discography. All of a sudden, the off the wall music they made their name on is relevant in this country once again.

Ever wonder why we stopped giving a fuck about Animal Collective in 2009? Early 2009, never forget. We got Merriweather Post Pavillion BEFORE Barack Obama was sworn in. Ever consider that album was like the celebration at the end of the Bush administration? That all their psych-folk tendencies were just a natural reaction to living in W's America? But now that new blood was entering office, their old ways wouldn't be as potent?

Look at how we reacted to Centipede Hz and this year's (Did you even remember they released a new album this year?) Painting With . We had no need for it.

But watching this video today, I recall how important this band was during a certain section of 21st century American history. This is the first time I've been triggered to watch an Animal Collective video in years, and I don't think it's just a coincidence considering what just happened in my backyard.

http://www.stereogum.com/1910353/animal-collective-play-pride-and-fight-for-the-first-time-in-15-years-as-trump-wins-presidency/video/

That's just silliness. I mean, their songs had titles like "Who Could Win a Rabbit" and "Daffy Duck". AC were great for a time, but they were hardly some kind of rage against the dying of the light in the Bush era.

but they were never a silly band and they never made silly music. there's so much melancholy in their music, and the pre-SJ stuff is especially sinister. they offered another world, their freak outs during songs like Baby Day or We Tigers or Kids on Holiday or The Purple Bottle were closer to the deadly Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages than empty goofiness. it was dark catharsis and refreshing during a really bleak time in this country and in the world. they weren't raging against, they offered an alternative that was more than navel gazing.

They made a lot of silly music - Who Could Win a Rabbit being a prime example. I think what made a lot of their early stuff interesting was the way they were constantly popping the dramatic balloons they were inflating--all their yelping and unpredictable percussion blasts and hardcore growls amidst droning ambient. They blended silly and serious like it was a Reese's peanut butter cup.

The lyrics to Who Could Win a Rabbit might almost be a missions statement. It's basically a 'fuck the world' song, but instead of going 'relax, feel love, hold hands' or all of that, it's 'habit or rabbit rabbit or a rib habit or rabbit rabbit or a rib' The habit in this case being nuns uniform, the rabbit being anarchist farm getaway, and a rib being wordplay.

I think a better candidate for a group that people stopped caring about after the Bush administration ended is The Thermals.

So I listened to Sung Tongs with the lyric sheet from Genius, and there's a bunch of rage in there, confusion, abdication. But also, the last three songs, uhm, they're all about sex, and that's not really something AnCo was that good at describing.

Dog of height in the trees
Won't you come down doggy
Such a sweet doggy
I brought you your dinner
My doggy I miss you kissing from my palm

I remember when I first got you doggy

But you lay there so still doggy
You lay there
So still

Dog who fell to the ground
Twisted your neck doggy
Don't look right doggy
The vet came with sutures
He said "Dave
Hey the doctor cannot save your dog"

But I remember when I first got you dog

But you lay there so still doggy
You lay there
So still

Dog of depth in the dirt
They buried you deep doggy
You're the best doggy
My friend has a doggy
She's real nice dog
I wish you could chase her round my yard

I remember when I first got you dog

there ya go, i think a lot of people that think of them as this silly fuck-off band never read the lyrics. ^ Doggy is a great example, the whole Campfire Songs album is incredibly sad. the artwork for Spirit and Feels depict this children's book, henry darger fantasy gone wrong. look at the lyrics for Daffy Duck, one of the songs mentioned above, and it's not exactly some Pollyanna goof off. Feels, their "love record," is full of unrequited love and longing and loss:

What I need is good advice
Cooked on plates around me
Rubber hands and silly friends
Pasted on my wall

Someone salt
A sweet sea soup
That I could swim in proudly
We might swim like laughing ducks
In your pink lagoon

There we go changing again
There we go again

My hands can make yours
Warm again
If not absorbed in blankets
Are you in need of teen angst
And nibble on your neck?

And if I had volcano boots
For swimming in volcanoes
Do you know the origins of laughing ducks?
Oh what's a matter with those birds?

There we go changing again
There we go again

What you need's a happy farm
With happy goats and sheep
What I need's a happy arm
To swing ya 'round like father

Re Doggy, it's sad but also infantile. It's infantile, but in a performative way. It's kinda creepy. I'm not sure I like it, particularly, and I definitely prefer AnCo when they're much more noisy and explicitly ugly.

i don't think it's infantile, it's just plain spoken and wistful. idk about it being 'performative' - i've been seeing this used a lot lately as a buzzword, essentially meaning 'inauthentic,' and i don't think that fits Doggy at all, or any of their songs. you could call AC a lot of things but i don't think they were ever inauthentic - their appeal was the intense and palpable emotion and energy that they gave off. Doggy might be one of the most straightforward songs they've ever written. Spirit is the best combo of the melancholy of the acoustic stuff and the explicit ugliness of their noisest stuff.

It's definitely infantile, it's regressing into a trauma from childhood, rather than dealing with the present. What I mean by 'performative' is stuff like the constant use of 'doggy', which continues even though it's made it's point. It's as if Avey Tare knows that he's a grownup pretending to be a little boy, and that's not so much 'inauthentic' as it's healthy.

I mean, AnCo were performative. They weren't animals. They weren't tigers. They were 'inauthentic' if we think authenticity means meaning what one says. They didn't, they were in character. But the characters communicated emotion as well. That's not true of stuff like My Girls and Brother Sport, though, which definitely seems to mean what it says.