animal collective - centipede hz

this deakin song is nice (xp!). hoping that lo-ish-fi stream is a particularly bad format for this album, tho, cuz i'm continuing to dig the songs qua songs but finding it all a bit muddily busy.

ya that was good. tho i am a major stan, i admit. the sonics became more appealing, though i'll wait until i have the proper version before listening again.

the website now has all the tracks available to stream, btw.

where do you see that/how can i get to it? i've been failing at this thing all evening.

nm found it

Can't get past the "ugly mush" production. Sounds terrible.

Not enough Noah.

the deakin track is the only one that grabs me so far

i'm listening to a vbr copy and it's much clearer than the stuff i heard on the stream, or at least it sounds good on my speakers, which are middling. lots of good stuff on here. more like strawberry jam on the sound end, but the songwriting and melodies (even if they are a bit buried,) are as strong as the more recent stuff. the "new town burnout"/"monkey riches"/"mercury man" run is my favorite bit. some of the best music of their career. definitely an avey-heavy record, but when was the last time one wasn't really?

the deakin one's alright, but his voice just sounds kind of ill-formed (or at least not distinctive enough) compared to either of the other guys'.

have to say i'm taking to this album as a whole a lot more quickly than i have any other animal collective. sometimes it takes me a while to figure out their stuff, if i ever do, but nearly every song on this thing has something for me to latch onto. it's not the drastic leap away that merriweather was, but it applies the good things learned on that album to their older, more dynamic sound.

kinda disappointing (for the first listen at least)

Right now I'm totally stuck on "Applesauce," at the risk of burning myself put on it. But the rear of the album's gnarly too. Not sure whether this has more staying power than MPP yet (I hope it does)

Rest not rear, yikes

Wire review reckons the opening 4 tracks are potentially the greatest front-run on an album EVA btw

The density of earlier records w/ the instinctual "first thought / best thought" approach replaced by precision. This record is an amateur musicologists dream.

this is really terrible sounding to my ears and also makes my stomach feel ill

Staying power is not one of AC's strong points.

Like a burrito on the windsheild, so beautiful

most of the tracks on here sound like a band trying to play multiple songs at once

the burrito soundbite was inspired

disappointing, like nostormo said, it doesn't grab me because it's just sort of more of the same, with a less appealing varnish. whole aesthetic of the thing feels really limp compared to all their past records, which stood alone. But I bought the vinyl so fuck

I haven't heard this yet, although I have a feeling this will be a crossroads for me - either it'll reconfirm how much and why I like this band so much or it'll put me off ever listening again.

this is really terrible sounding to my ears and also makes my stomach feel ill

― Mordy, Tuesday, 4 September 2012 23:36 (Yesterday)

Comments like this make me suspect I'll never listen to Centipede Hz.

From what I could hear of Honeycomb/Gotham it sounds like they're going through their "Repo" stage (might be interesting to look at AC vs Black Dice's career to see if there are parallels, but I can't be fucked).

repo >>>> chz

Listening to it now, like it so far but I haven't kept up much with them... their music always reminded me of something you'd hear in a hybrid car commercial where two early 20-somethings in matching mustard-yellow wool hats can somehow afford a $60,000 machine.

*Sigh* I don't know why that description always gets bandied around by people when any advertiser wouldn't dream of touching AC music with a stick. It's a lazy lumping of this band in with the defanged Brooklyn twee/hipster scene that burgeoned well after AC had established their sound. There's a clear difference between the kind of hip Pamplemoussian indie guff that gets peddled out on ads and what AC have ever done, save for maybe a single or two off the last album and that's only because of a modicum of catchy lyricism ("I want to hang around with you/Adobe slabs for my girls")....

Pretty sure there's no risk of songs from this album being used in any advertising whatsoever.

Also, this is 2012, can we stop using "ad music" as a blanket dismissal of any music?

Yeah, you get Clinic on adverts thesedays!

Fair enough, it's probably my too-associative memory ... I still think of Burger King's flame broiled whopper whenever I hear "I Melt With You" or two burgers spinning in unison when Double Vision pops up on the radio. AC might have influenced the Brooklyn indie sound, so it makes me think of some scraggly bearded guy in a v-neck t-shirt sitting in a kiddie pool while zoey deschanel lookalike #3 dances around with an aspirational piece of consumer electronics. Maybe I just watch too much TV.

Anyway, I like this new album.

I still think of Burger King's flame broiled whopper whenever I hear "I Melt With You" or two burgers spinning in unison when Double Vision pops up on the radio.

How much history did you have with these songs before they were used in commercials?

The only time a commercial might dictate my perception of a song is if it's something new I've never heard (or old, if I've likewise never heard it). But even in those cases, I can usually shake the commercial association if I get a copy of the track or album almost immediately and listen to it in a different setting.

Volkswagen absolutely introduced me to Nick Drake, but most of the time I can successfully hear "Pink Moon" without thinking of Golfs.

I'm just kind of sick of seeing how often advertising gets brought up whenever anybody talks about indie rock.

AC are victims of their own success in that way. There's obviously a degree of connection/crossover between AC and the kind of music Spectrum mentions, but it frustrates me when I read such bromides. Despite their success and subsequent influence on the yuckier end of the indie spectrum, AC aren't all that twee (when people start going on about their purported "childlike" qualities that's when I know the person hasn't bothered to listen to em properly) nor has their music ever been accessible enough to warrant a car advert.

How much history did you have with these songs before they were used in commercials?

Normally I would listen to Foreigner on my boombox while lifting weights in my garage with the door open so the neighbors could see ... now I just think about hamburgers all the time. So maybe it's just a coincidence that song makes me think of Burger King.

It's prob just my own quirk. But when you do see this stuff in ads, it takes a little effort to shake the associations. Took me a while to get back to Lust for Life, but only after I took several cruise vacations.

Trainspotting did more visual damage to Lust for Life to me than the cruise commercials did.

Anyway, as for Centipede Hz, I listened to it last night. I don't know if I like it or not, but it seems more immediate, less aimless, than a lot of AC I've heard in the past. They're sharpening their skills for sure.

*Sigh* I don't know why that description always gets bandied around by people when any advertiser wouldn't dream of touching AC music with a stick. It's a lazy lumping of this band in with the defanged Brooklyn twee/hipster scene that burgeoned well after AC had established their sound.

Their music was used in an ad for Crayola. Which is about as twee as it gets.

So, was MPP their "New Jersey" or is it this one?

Yeah, but thats a case of context making it twee, not content.

(xpost)

xxpost haha, seriously? what song may i ask? note I am Britishers so I therefore have an admittedly distanced viewpoint.

MPP was their New Jersey, definitely.

it was "Sweet Road"

I tried whittling that album down to the best bits a little while ago and honestly, for a supposed breakthrough album it's got a shitload of duds. The two singles (Summertime Clothes and My Girls) do nothing to protect them from accusations of tweeness and verge on self parody. Guy's Eyes and Taste are completely forgettable. And several tracks are just excruciatingly unpleasant to listen to. I'd keep Bluish, No More Runnings, Brother Sport and maybe Lion In A Coma. The Fall Be Kind EP that came out after is a much better set of songs.

Sweet Road is fairly twee/childlike I guess, at least it has some BOC-ish kid noises and stuff yeah.

this was probably my favorite song from the centipede live shows. was always the closer, didn't make it on the album
http://soundcloud.com/kcrw/animal-collective-crimson-live

Strawberry Jam is still the best.

Listening to the samples of this album made me really very sad

http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style620_413/public/animal-collective-centipedia.png
http://www.spin.com/lists/animal-collective-centipedia

:)

Click each entry to read more!

Nah.

I'm not sure if its just IE (which I'm stuck with here at work), but if I do click on an item, it keeps doing this weird refresh thing that reloads the page, briefly returning it to the main home page before loading up the page I was on again. Super annoying.

thst's def an IE issue

you misspelled 'band'

Children's science fair projects are kind of endearing, no? Or have I misunderstood this analogy?

well they're not something you want to spend a lot of time with

this album has grown on me though, "Moonjock" is one of their best. "Mercury Man" is overlooked

If you can’t spare some time for “Wide Eyed” at least then idk

these live videos are awesome
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa-4FgWUp44
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0h_4cSuzek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VesIkXdWrsw

wonder if this album is gonna get critically evaluated at any point. seems like it came at a time where the new fans wanted another MPP-like pop album and the old fans were getting kinda sick of them. but despite being kind of a headache its probably my favorite from them right now. I think its one of the most solid albums they've done track-for-track and I keep hearing new things every time I listen to it. the live renditions of these tracks are amazing too. I'm pretty bowled over by Aveys ability to sing like that live