animal collective

"Work can be scheduled, magic can't" - it's horseshit and it's not an idea that people in any other creative sphere that I've interacted with give any credence to. It's not an idea that a lot of musicians give any credence to - Bowie recorded Blackstar in sessions that were strictly timetabled, 10am to 4pm each day or whatever, presumably so he could fit it around family life - but some aspects of indie (and classic rock, to be fair) culture still have this frankly Randian idea that artists are special spectral snowflakes who just act as aerials for cosmic rays of inspiration. And it's nonsense.

It's certainly a romantic idea. I think there is room for both approaches.

"Work can be scheduled, magic can't" - it's horseshit and it's not an idea that people in any other creative sphere that I've interacted with give any credence to. It's not an idea that a lot of musicians give any credence to - Bowie recorded Blackstar in sessions that were strictly timetabled, 10am to 4pm each day or whatever, presumably so he could fit it around family life - but some aspects of indie (and classic rock, to be fair) culture still have this frankly Randian idea that artists are special spectral snowflakes who just act as aerials for cosmic rays of inspiration. And it's nonsense.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, 16 February 2016 12:38 (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not sure I agree at all. How is the idea that creativity can't be turned on and off like a tap 'Randian'? How does it not fluctuate from person to person?

Creativity doesn't come from cosmic rays, no, but if you work as a collective (unlike Bowie who is a bit of a high watermark for comparisons and also a solo artist with full auteurist control on his work), you are influenced and inspired by each other, and the place where you are, and the environment around you, and the tools you have to hand, and how often you get to meet up, and how tired you are, and what you saw on TV last night etc etc...

I'm pretty sure Bowie was writing and coming up with ideas outside of the allocated times you mention. Nobody sits there and goes 'right, brain, give me ideas!' - it doesn't work like that at all.

I'll give you a musician who would give credence to the idea - David Byrne, who in the first page of his book 'How Music Works' challenges the idea that songwriters sit at a desk until a mad look comes over them and they start scribbling-down notes on a page.

References to kimchi aside, I don't really have much of a problem with the Pitchfork write-up. It's pretty much a summation of how I feel about 'Painting With...'.
'Animal Collective - The Ride' is OTM.

Maybe Bowie is able to write amazing music in his sleep, but even he's had some low creative points. Dare I say it, I don't even rate Blackstar all that highly myself, but it's a matter of taste. The writer of that review is saying that because AC now live in different pockets of the world and have many other commitments than they used to, their sound is starting to ossify. Their best work came from collaboration and having a lot of time to just jam around and play with ideas and not really having to worry about delivering a finished product every couple of years. This is very different from booking studio time and saying 'right, let's make an album', which might suit some artists down to a T, but in my mind isn't really suited to these guys.

Well I have problems with auteur theory too.

what is auteur theory when applied to music written and played by the same people?

I haven't heard the album but this is some real BS

Old heads will tell you that the most exciting part of seeing them live was hearing songs months, sometimes years before they came out on record: I, for example, remember being in the basement of a sushi restaurant in Charlottesville, Virginia, watching Sung Tongs before anyone knew it existed, or wading through Webster Hall to a gorgeous, slowly dawning song they later called "Banshee Beat." The feeling of that moment is hard to describe, but it was something like standing in the light of a secret.

I was there, man!!

They're Pitchforking hard in that write-up, but I'm sad to say it's not wrong

I didn't read that as a 'special snowflakes' comment - my take was:

a) Making music that relies on a certain amount of face-to-face jamming and serendipity is harder when the members are scattered around the world. Geologist is in DC, Panda Bear is in Lisbon, and I think Avey Tare is in LA. That's 8 hours worth of time zones. Working on stuff piecemeal like an oil painting and sending each other FLACs doesn't work for everyone.
b) Your free time declines dramatically as you get older and accrue commitments have a family and in some cases help take care of sick parents etc, even if they are lucky fuckers with no day jobs.
c) Maybe Animal Collective has run its course - I don't think they'll either do anything drastically different to what they've done before, or make another MPP, and the zeitgeist's moved on for now anyway.

Maybe Bowie is able to write amazing music in his sleep, but even he's had some low creative points. Dare I say it, I don't even rate Blackstar all that highly myself, but it's a matter of taste. The writer of that review is saying that because AC now live in different pockets of the world and have many other commitments than they used to, their sound is starting to ossify. Their best work came from collaboration and having a lot of time to just jam around and play with ideas and not really having to worry about delivering a finished product every couple of years. This is very different from booking studio time and saying 'right, let's make an album', which might suit some artists down to a T, but in my mind isn't really suited to these guys.

Oops, missed this before I posted but I agree.

I was there, man!!

― frogbs, Tuesday, 16 February 2016 14:03

Or maybe not

Correction (2/16/16 2:04 p.m.): This review previously described hearing the album Sung Tongs at a concert in Charlottesville. The album in question is Feels

Oddly enough for me this is the best thing since mpp

everyonesome people wake up at dawn and write until lunch every day, other people take a bunch of amphetamines and write for 4 days straight while their wife and children move out in the background.

i need to start more sentences like that, i really like the effect

Old heads will tell you that the most exciting part of seeing them live was hearing songs months, sometimes years before they came out on record

this is otm. once they started touring the hits, it felt like they were just playing bad versions of the recorded songs. when the songs were fresh and unknown they had a different sort of magic to them

Conversely, I didn't take to the songs on Centipede Hz much at all until I heard them performed live. They were absolutely great on that tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7O0rBGSqjI

i like this song/video

I'm not sure I've ever liked one of their videos.

I like that song though.

They did play a lot of the Centipede Hz songs live before releasing the record. So when did this "touring the hits" thing start, if it even did?

i saw them twice post-MPP and the only new songs i can recall were 2 that ended up on fall be kind

i stopped following them after that so i'm not saying that they didn't ever play any new songs, but what was special about their live show IMO was that they virtually ONLY played new songs on their tours pre-MPP

I like this album. It reminds me of Little Creatures.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Thlittlecreates.jpg

I really like this record. It sounds like they were tired of Foster the People eating their lunch and decided to make a pop record to show people they could do it. "Floridada" is probably the catchiest song they've written literally ever.

Also, the "ah we were so young and naive once" talk from pitchfork is fucking hilarious in the shadow of stanning for PC Music

Animal Collective always felt like a "career band" even in the way that their first "big" statement was a 2xCD re-release of their first two albums.

Floridada is good but I wasn't grabbed by anything else. not sure rereleasing your first two obscure albums to a wider audience counts you as a career band.

I like the new album better than the one prior to it, but I don't know yet it's the equal of that mid-00s rarified DAMN zone. Pros: great pop steez + it feels like they got back to the LP as a balanced, unified thing that isn't making concessions to a larger public or trample it. Cons: they're a bit frantic vocally and there's next to no drift (these were issues I had with CHz too btw).

Y'all will think I'm crazy for saying this but I'm gonna say it: I kinda want an AC era where the LPs sound like the AC equiv of killer Grateful Dead shows. Time to stretch out, lose their minds.

I am probably alone in this but I've always equated Animal Collective in the 00s with Tortoise in the 90s. Tortoise was this lightning bolt of WOW to a lot of indie kids and they spawned an obsessive fanbase. They felt fresh and unpredictable for about 7-8 years. Then they got older, their sound ossified, and they just sort of became this career band that you can depend on if you're into that stuff. Sort of feel like Animal Collective is heading in that direction.

That seems accurate, this feels like the most prototypically 'Animal Collective' sounding album they've made, and it seems to have been pretty well received by their core fanbase while not being a real stylistic shift or leap forward like they were regularly making during their creative peak. I guess they seem more interested in exploring new territory for them in their solo projects these days, though none of that has really been successful or interesting recently.

I like the vocal interplay on this one. A song like Hocus Pocus could be arranged for acapella.

Cons: they're a bit frantic vocally and there's next to no drift (these were issues I had with CHz too btw).

Yeah, since Strawberry Jam they seem to be obsessed with filling the entire dynamic and temporal range and there's a claustrophobia prevalent throughout a lot of their work. That's why I especially like the more ambient/ballady moments on MPP than anything else. It's kind of mad to think that this band once came out with Campfire Songs, which is a masterclass in dynamic restraint.

Savaged by The Quietus:

http://thequietus.com/articles/19709-the-lead-review-animal-collective-painting-with-review

Though the reviewer claims that they didn't go in with an agenda, the second sentence reads: " Sure, they were overpraised at first, as American man-bands so often are" which reeks of 'OMFG white ppl are so lame SMGDH'.

lmao it's true, the british have never once overrated their own bands.

funny how he calls 'strawberry jam' their 'deserter's songs'. always saw that as an awkward, transitionary album.

i can't believe they've just released a song called 'lying in the grass' in 2016. jeeeeeesus.

"With Animal Collective's tenth studio album out tomorrow, Lee Arizuno explores the latest and most disappointing of offerings from "Little Donkey, Hello Kitty and Crazy Frog"

ouch

Quietus review loses all credibility when it reps for Grumbling Fur but I'm sure this album is horrid

Haven't heard the album and may not hear the album - don't think I heard the last? - but "you can't go one bar without wanting to shout, "Go to bed!" is a really funny putdown.

That review is terrible, reeks of shame and embarrassment, and calls out the band for the very things they were praised for in 2005. It isn't criticism, it's someone trying to speak for/to/at an audience he imagines is craving that particular opinion. It has zero to do with anything on that record, and mostly to do with how out of fashion "faux naif" lyrics and garishly colored productions are (to him) in 2016.

It isn't bad journalism or criticism to point how trends change, or even to point out how a band's music isn't as "relevant" to the current music landscape. It's bad to offer critique without justification, eg explain why "faux naif" lyrics or "sing song numbers" are bad. One could effortlessly apply the exact same things to Sung Tongs, and even to the reviewer, that is a good record.

Of course, I haven't heard this record. Maybe it's terrible (tho the songs I have heard strike me as "more of the same" with perhaps more studio polish). I don't really even care about AC anymore (like, for the last 10 years) -- but that review is a good example of why I avoid reading most pop music criticism.

i mean, yeah. credibility had already been lost

I would agree with you, Dominique but to be fair to the writer, he does say in the final paragraph something along the lines of wide-eyed naivety speaking to him when he (and the members of AC) were in their 20s, but now he is approaching 40, he'd be more interested in their take on adult themes rather than this less-than-subtle attempt.

I feel that they were a lot better at doing the psychedelic whimsy thing in their 20s. By MPP, it started getting embarrassingly infantile.

That review is terrible, reeks of shame and embarrassment, and calls out the band for the very things they were praised for in 2005.

exactly, neither this nor the Pitchfork review really explain why this is so much worse than their other albums, besides "well it's 10 years later and we're all older so.."

Quietus review is truly embarrassing, reads like a bad Maddox article

DL, I can see your point -- I might even agree that I'd be interested in hearing AC make songs that spoke to what their lives are like these days, or how it feels to be 35 and in a band like Animal Collective. I might even counter that stuff like "My Girls" and some of Panda Bear's solo stuff does exactly this. However, you can't criticize a band because they don't make the songs you want them to make. You can really only talk about what they *have* made, and if the music's primary failing happens to be the same thing you (and I'm using "you" haphazardly here -- I haven't read anything by this writer on AC prior to this piece) praised them for years earlier, it comes off badly imo.

Yeah, I agree on that point. I think it would be fairer to say ' You've been in this game for years, peddling this kind of thing album after after album. The schtick was tolerable at first, but it's been verging on the parodic since the one before last and now it's seriously embarrassing'.

Something that frustrates me most about the concept of this album (and it's something the Queitus writer touches on) is the 'meta' conceit of actively referencing avant-gardism. Like, just because you're singing about Dada and have vaguely cubist/collagey artwork, it doesn't put you up there with those people. It feels weak. 'Animal Collective presents Surrealism', like a Channel 4 arts season.

It isn't criticism, it's someone trying to speak for/to/at an audience he imagines is craving that particular opinion.

very otm, good post dominique.

since Strawberry Jam they seem to be obsessed with filling the entire dynamic and temporal range and there's a claustrophobia prevalent throughout a lot of their work

hmm. interesting take. i've always gotten a rollercoaster feel from it, maybe it's been the vocals that are UP and down and then UP and DOWN combined w the electronic squishy rhythms, actually conjures a "queasy" feeling, not that it makes me want to vom but it has that sense of, you are at a party, and you are really buzzing, and you are trying to maintain. this could just be me reacting to their general sound compared to other things i listen to (maybe it would go away if i listened to modern AC all the time) but for example the bass synth on "Golden Gal" has that phased effect that makes me think of the weird noises you hear when your stomach is turning.

just because you're singing about Dada and have vaguely cubist/collagey artwork, it doesn't put you up there with those people

eh i thought breaking down artworld elitism was one of the big themes of the day. automatic writing can be done by anyone, "artiste" or craftsman, they all dream. i like it, i think their stuff has always been cubist in its way.

"you know that what follows isn't some stunt hatchet job on a band I don't care for...co-founding member Teddy Bear has said"

yeah talk about hedging your bets

this band has always been an easy target for assholes.

not really interested in them condensing their sound further into a pop format, and i can see how that experiment might be a failure, but this quietus writer was free to describe that failure in a way that wasn't self-righteous and condescending

i don't think centipede hz or any solo panda bear release has been about "bouncing around in neverland", really, so maybe my issue is with this guys' premise that the band has never expanded its thematic palette through the years