animal collective - centipede hz

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

Not surprised. Looks like a pretty cool list though, I'll check it out at home when I can use a real browser.

"Xtro -

Avey Tare: I think one of the reasons I really like horror is kind of once you go there all boundaries are broken. It's kind of like anything can happen, it doesn't really matter. A little magician midget can appear suddenly and no questions asked."

Isn't that Deep red?

haven't looked at the centipedia thing yet, but i assume WOOKIEFOOT is in there?

The centipedia is a lovely idea. Now if it was only applied to a band I actively enjoyed.

No surprise, the actual release sounds way better than the muddy stream they had on their website. The songs really benefit from the added clarity.

The mp3 overcompression textures are apparently intentional. They make for interesting sonics when they're just another element in the mix, and not a limitation of the whole recording.

It's early on but the songs feel very overloaded, which I can totally get into.

cool list, though no surprises with the music picked

They forgot the Sonic the Hedgehog Soundtrack, "Meshes of the Afternoon", and Twin Peaks. Also, the hazy dreamy nostalgia of polaroids/VHS tapes. j/k

Awesome list, but I'd rather read it all in one page than click on a million links.

Also, where's the Beach Boys?

Whiney, spin is losing out on a very important market by not having a mobile version of its site.

Address this and I'll touch your body

A list of cool stuff, yes, and some interesting reference points I wouldn't necessarily associate with AC (Todd Terje?)...

Hardcore Serious Old school Committed Animal Collective fans moaning about MPP as if its some kind of awful commercial sell-out or hideous tuneless dirge compared to all their other albums amuse me no end.

Why? You're allowed to dislike a particular release by a favoured band. Especially if they're the kind of band who change a fair bit from release to release.

whiney is this the 20,000 word thing you mentioned on twitter you were psyched to be running? i mean okay ~what the market will bear~ and all that, but it's a little sad that the best way for spin to get people to read is by expending so much time and effort on an animal collective feature

also, someone tell me what the first few words to the single are, because i keep hearing it as

let, let, let, let, let go
erotic seesaw
(...)
let, let, let, let, let's go
bionic keytar

i find, like the cocteaus, that AC is best appreciated without knowing the lyrics. Apart from Two Corvettes cos those are great.

frightened babies poo

xposts to DL.

Because butthurt fandom is a very weird psychological state and massively amusing to people who are at a slightly dispassionate remove. I should know, I'm the most butthurt fan ever!

For the sake of lols, and because I'm alone in the office and bored on my lunchbreak, I'm gonna dissect an earlier post you made. Please don't take offence at this; I'm not snarking, just amused, and I've done all of the things I'm about to outline an embarassing number of times myself, and with a band far less acclaimed / cool / etc etc than Animal Collective.

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.

There's nothing "supposed" about MPP being a breakthrough; it got massive critical acclaim, sold way more than previous records, and broke them to whole new audiences. "Shitload" and "duds" are both really loaded, pejorative terms, but they're also incredibly vague, and without further explanation don't reveal anything about the record, only your feelings towards it. How many is a shitload, proportionally? 1? 2? Half the record? What's qualifies as a dud, and in what context?

The two singles (Summertime Clothes and My Girls) do nothing to protect them from accusations of tweeness and verge on self parody.

Why should their songs "protect" them? What do they need "protecting" from? When I've made these kind of comments in the past it's been because I've been upset at the idea of being associated with the "unwashed masses" or "supermarket fans" or whatever who've been guided into a band by a big hit single. Only a butthurt fan would be able to recognise self-parody (or be concerned about it).

Guy's Eyes and Taste are completely forgettable.

I remember them both very well, thanks; in fact, the memorability of tunes on MPP compared to previous records was, for me, the big selling point; at last it seemed as if their melodies were strong enough to sustain the onslaught of their sonic context.

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.

How many is several? Literally excruciating? Which ones? By not naming them of explaining why, it seems like hand-waving dismissal rather than cogent reasons. (Ironically, Lion In A Coma is about the only track I didn't like.) (Also, I found Strawberry Jam head-ache inducing from start to finish, so could say the same about that. But my wife much prefers it to MPP. Horses for courses/)

It is, of course, totally OK to dislike a release by a band you love, particularly if its something utterly sui generis from the rest of their catalogue, which you're almost saying here; at the same time, though, you're also saying that some of it is self-parodic, suggesting it's not that far removed from the stuff by them that you DO like.

Butthurt fandom often seems to me to strive for some kind of objective criteria to justify its butthurtness, but it seldom actually manages to find objective objections instead of subjective dislikes. And that's also OK, but the language of the butthurt fan is about universals and absolutes, probably in order to try and persuade others that butthurtness is the right response here.

I like MPP; it stands out to me as the strongest, most accessible album I've heard by AC (not heard the new one or some of the very early stuff), but I still think of it as being, compared to your common or garden indie rock and popular rock and mainstream rock etc etc etc as being wildly strange and experimental and out-there. Imagine a butthurt Kaiser Chiefs fan being presented with this. Or a Scouting For Girls fan; someone who'd self-identify as beuing into 'indie music' in the UK. Their brane would melt. But you're saying it's awful, accessible, tuneless, twee, self-parodic nonsense, and I just find that juxtaposition, that subcultural micropolitiking, really amusing and funny.

i'm going to dissect this post by adding the phrase 'your mum' wherever relevant. one sec

No, YOUR mum.

Because butthurt fandom is a very weird psychological state and massively amusing to people who are at a slightly dispassionate remove. I should know, I'm the most butthurt fan ever!

{your mum is in} a very weird psychological state and massively amusing to people who are at a slightly dispassionate remove

For the sake of lols, and because I'm alone in the office and bored on my lunchbreak, I'm gonna dissect an earlier post you made. Please don't take offence at this; I'm not snarking, just amused, and I've done all of the things I'm about to outline , and with a band far less acclaimed / cool / etc etc than Animal Collective.

i've done {your mum} an embarassing number of times myself

There's nothing "supposed" about MPP being a breakthrough; it got massive critical acclaim, sold way more than previous records, and broke them to whole new audiences.

i broke {your mum} to whole new audiences

I like MPP; it stands out to me as the strongest, most accessible album I've heard by AC (not heard the new one or some of the very early stuff), but I still think of it as being, compared to your common or garden indie rock and popular rock and mainstream rock etc etc etc as being wildly strange and experimental and out-there. Imagine a butthurt Kaiser Chiefs fan being presented with this. Or a Scouting For Girls fan; someone who'd self-identify as beuing into 'indie music' in the UK. Their brane would melt. But you're saying it's awful, accessible, tuneless, twee, self-parodic nonsense, and I just find that juxtaposition, that subcultural micropolitiking, really amusing and funny.

i find {your mum} really amusing and funny

Love curly brackets.

Hey Nick, I distinctly remember you saying you didn't like MPP when it came out - something about a pixelated butterfly flapping its wings way close to your face <--this = perfect description of why I dislike a number of the tracks.

That's very true, I hated it and think I did say something like that; it took me literally months (and the arrival of summer / falling in love with my hi-fi again) for me to get it.

Ha, great piece by SR from back when MPP was released - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/feb/06/simon-reynolds-animal-collective

I like MPP; it stands out to me as the strongest, most accessible album I've heard by AC (not heard the new one or some of the very early stuff), but I still think of it as being, compared to your common or garden indie rock and popular rock and mainstream rock etc etc etc as being wildly strange and experimental and out-there. Imagine a butthurt Kaiser Chiefs fan being presented with this. Or a Scouting For Girls fan; someone who'd self-identify as beuing into 'indie music' in the UK. Their brane would melt. But you're saying it's awful, accessible, tuneless, twee, self-parodic nonsense, and I just find that juxtaposition, that subcultural micropolitiking, really amusing and funny.

I'm not comparing MPP to Scouting for Girls, I'm comparing it with their previous albums which I believe to be stronger, more accessible, tuneful, less obviously 'twee' or in-line with the kind of accusations this band seems to shoulder all too often. I don't think the album's nonsense - there are good bits on it and I do listen to it occasionally. But as a longtime fan it confounds me that this had to be their breakthrough (yes yes, timing, good PR etc play a part in this), but in terms of overall quality I hear it as their 'New Jersey' - a bloated record with no more going for it than 'Strawberry Jam'
I'm not 'butthurt' about it. This isn't a "they've gone shit since their old stuff" rant - I love 'Tomboy' and I really like 'Fall Be Kind' too - I think those are among their best releases as a collective. However I do resent in quite a big way just how popular MPP has become, to the point where many casual listeners see it as their definitive work. For this reason I can imagine a lot of people stopping at MPP and writing off AC as this smeary, squelchy, messy, mid-range, claustrophobic, overstuffed and granulated to fuck sound - when really an album like Sung Tongs, or even Feels might have them change their mind over it.

x-post; SR's off in his last 2 paras, though - I think there's a lot of sex in MPP, especially Bluish and Guy's Eyes.

Thing is, if

many casual listeners see it as their definitive work.

I hope I am not too forward in thinking the juxtaposing of "sex" with "Animal Collective" makes me think of cotton candy vomit and/or brony cosplay.

MPP sounds very much like a Panda Bear album to me, and I've always been an Avey Tare fan (though Person Pitch is the best AnCo-related solo-album). Strawberry Jam and Centipede HZ are very much Avey Tare-albums, which is why I prefer them. Panda Bear is very much the twee one, while Avey Tare is the one who screams a lot. The perfect AnCo album is a mix of these two poles, with a surplus of Avey Tare-ness.

I love Centipede HZ, and I don't get why the reviews have been so bad.

They're not bad, though; average score of 74. http://www.metacritic.com/music/centipede-hz/animal-collective

73!

Frederik - See, I kind of object to most descriptions of AC as 'twee'. I think it's an incorrect

Thing is, if

many casual listeners see it as their definitive work.
then that means that it IS their definitive work, that's how these things get decided.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Friday, 7 September 2012 14:43 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This isn't necessarily true. It just means it's their most ubiquitous. On the whole I think you're being particularly picky about the phrasing of my sentences here. I don't see what the problem with me saying that I think this album is hugely overrated in the context of their other work and that it saddens me to think a lot of people will be put-off or misled by its shortcomings.

But it's massive and much-loved! No one seems put off at all; it came 8th in the p4k people's list thing. That's my point; you're worried people will be put off by its shortcomings but you're one of a small group who perceives any shortcomings, everyone else who's concerned seems to love it.

Are you serious?

You could apply this logic to Scouting For Girls (They had massive hits! Everyone else seems to love them!)

There are plenty of AC haters on this very board, many of whom I'm pretty sure checked out MPP due to hype, thought 'what's the big deal about this?' and proceeded no further.

From LA Weekly's list of worst bands ever, as number 5: I really wanted to like Merriweather Post Pavilion, even going far out of my way to appreciate the record as it was surely intended: super-stoned, miles from civilization in the northern California woods. Still, no dice. The problem is that Animal Collective are a special kind of unlistenable; their albums don't reward active engagement, but they don't make good background music, either. Their brand of twee is cloying and grating like an attention-starved, sugar-crashing eight-year-old who wants you to admire his finger painting, while you're trying to wash the dishes. -Ben Westhoff

http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2012/02/top_20_worst_bands_ever_complete_list.php?page=6

People like him should listen more to Here Comes the Indian. As should everyone else, for that matter.

and Sung Tongs.

Funny you say Noah is the twee one Frederik. If there's any twee member of the band I always figured it was Avey. His screeching and bawling can sometimes come off a little like a toddler in a high chair having a tantrum whereas Panda seems more placid, more restrained although his voice is sweeter.

And then Panda Bear is the big brother who tells the little brother to calm down. Directly, in Brother Sport. And also the mother, in Take Pills. Well, perhaps twee is the wrong word, but he annoys me...

I try to ignore AC lyrics as much as possible - particularly on the newer material. I prefer to let the syllables wash past with certain key phrases looming out, so "frightened babies poo" doesn't even register to me and I feel better off for it. Again, AC singing is a kind of Liz Fraser thing for me so I don't generally get too hung up about the message.

That said I think what a lot of people construe as "twee" or "childlike" is slightly off. There is a running theme about childhood, about family, about memories, pets etc, but I don't think this represents a wish to "return to childhood" any more than Fever Ray is championing domesticity with her lyrics.

MPP is stronger, more accessible, tuneful than their earlier albums imo. Except for 'Fireworks' and 'Rev Green'.

almost everything that ever got called 'twee' was being called that unhelpfully and inaccurately tbh, except maybe 'a midsummer night's happening' by the sallyangie