animal collective

Still haven't heard it, waiting for my LP to ship 🙃

haha my friend doesn't like them because 'they sound like the beatles'.
― cozen (Cozen), Friday, February 6, 2004 6:30 PM (fourteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't know they'd released music since 2012

been playing fireworks on repeat for a week. beautiful melody, and the change halfway through... agh. avey has a magic touch underneath that sea of electronics. go back to 'spirit they're gone' for his whimsical, ethereal, fantastical bare songwriting. i swear that album is so unique - sonically, dynamically. never heard anything like it.

oh, no! my singing voice is gone! my singing voice is gone! my singing voice is gone!

new album Tangerine Reef out August 17.

https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2018/07/Animal-Collective-Tangerine-Reef-1531756837-640x640.jpg

1. Hair Cutter
2. Buffalo Tomato
3. Inspector Gadget
4. Buxom
5. Coral Understanding
6. Airpipe (To a New Transition)
7. Jake and Me
8. Coral by Numbers
9. Hip Sponge
10. Coral Realization
11. Lundsten Coral
12. Palythoa
13. Best of Times (Worst of All)

"Hair Cutter" is really cool, sounds a lot like the calmer moments on Here Comes the Indian.

new song debuted last night in Atlanta at the first show of the US Sung Tongs tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DQH5KFbCU8

3. Inspector Gadget

Could you BEEEEE any more....?

Saw the Sung Tongs show in LA and, aside from a few moments, really disliked it. I love the album but watching these two grown men sing infantile gibberish really hammered home how dumb the whole endeavor is. Made me appreciate the way they grew on later albums—Fuller, noisier, more complex. This show felt less like revisiting old material than regressing to a lesser state.

ha, right on. they peaked at their first album if you ask me. aside a couple of cuts on later LPs, everything else is silly bollocks.

I was surprised by my own reaction though because I absolutely did not go into this show as a hater. In fact I’ve seen them twice before—on the MPP tour at the Troubador, one of my all-time favorite shows ever; and a few years later at Hollywood Bowl, a decent show with big high points. I think there’s something to recommend in nearly all of their albums and the run up to and including MPP is pretty remarkable. Something about seeing them in this stripped down fashion though, really deflated the experience. Judging by the crowd reaction I may have been alone in this feeling.

pgwp maybe alone in it, but fair for you to feel how you do

saw them on strawberry jam tour, in which they mostly played material from Merriweather. Honestly these guys are insufferable to me now, though the sung tongs pitchfork performance was a nice bit of nostalgia. I have most of their records and EPs but would likely give them away for free if anyone wants to pay postage

always interested in AC vinyl, ILXmail me if you're serious.

no vinyl sorry, should have said CDs

I have water curses, prospect hummer, sung tongs, merriweather..etc

no worries, someone else might take you up on that though! still don't think I've heard Water Curses but boy do I hate Avey's "yelp" style vocals that pop up in the later work with distressing frequency

yeah, otm

strawberry jam seemed to avey taking over way more and making it his own roadshow. the panda songs were always the best IMO

*seemed to find

Feels reissued on vinyl today, unreleased live recording uploaded: 8/22/04 - Neumo's - Seattle, WA

wastered
did you see the words
kids on holiday
people
loch raven
banshee beat
the purple bottle

finally listened to "Painting With" and it's...kinda fun actually? I mean I get that this and Centipede don't feel special the way MPP did but they're still pretty neat, I feel like if a different band had recorded those records they would've been much better received

I recommend the live recordings they've released from the PW tour. I like the album but it honestly felt more like a justification to tour and put on that amazing show. The lack of transitions is what sinks the album for me- they're jumping off points. the whole sound palette of this record was really well suited to extended transitions and blending. the album is too discreet for me

DISCRETE

(sorry)

Saw the Sung Tongs show in LA and, aside from a few moments, really disliked it. I love the album but watching these two grown men sing infantile gibberish really hammered home how dumb the whole endeavor is. Made me appreciate the way they grew on later albums—Fuller, noisier, more complex. This show felt less like revisiting old material than regressing to a lesser state.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Thursday, August 2, 2018 4:09 PM (one year ago)

Idk, Avey Tare squealing "wheee!" in response to Noah's descending scale motif on Leaf House may be the smartest thing I've ever heard on a pop record, as well as the most playful.

It works on record. It did not work live.

Interesting. I don't totally love any of their albums, tbh. All have some elements I really like and others I find offputting. Well, to be fair, I haven't heard them all, and of the several i've heard, some are more familiar to me than others. A couple I keep meaning to spend more time with...

On Sung Tongs it's that preppy, collegiate vibe that repels. And maybe it's just a product of the 60's folk-pop reference points. But the infantile regression therapy stuff is actually what I find most appealing in it.

the first Sung Tongs show, in December 2017, was one of the best shows I've ever seen. some of the most powerful crowd energy ever- I understand what you're saying and I imagine that it lost some of the magic when the toured it, but goddamn, the energy in the room that night, the brilliant surprise of COVERED IN FROGS into Winter's Love, the transcendent Visiting Friends... it was an amazing night.

PB was also going wild vocally that night- it was a throwback to the original ST shows I've seen online from like 2003.

they were very good for about three years (2003-2006) but Merriweather Post Pavillion was horrible and established their later signature 'terrible' sound and now its been almost 15 years since they released anything decent. Sung tongs/feels/campfire songs were all great though.

Am in general agreement--Prospect Hummer also holds up well in the EP dept IMO

Strawberry Jam was the harbinger of the decline.

pom otm, much prefer MPP to Strawberry Jam. But MPP set the template for the unlistenably busy sound of what came after.

Sung Tongs and Feels are both painfully classic though

When they lost their initial sense of off-handed, accidental exploration and started camping on the Respectable Art of Timeless Songcraft, I couldn't help but feel like trawling for 9.0+ p4k scores had become their sole raison d'être (it worked, mind you).

Aka their earlier stuff really was better.

I saw them many times in the window plax mentioned. Those shows, most of which were built around the Feels songs, really were amazing. When that album eventually came out it was a huge disappointment, and I never really put my finger on why that was. All the chaos gone, perhaps

When they lost their initial sense of off-handed, accidental exploration and started camping on the Respectable Art of Timeless Songcraft, I couldn't help but feel like trawling for 9.0+ p4k scores had become their sole raison d'être (it worked, mind you).

― pomenitul, Tuesday, August 4, 2020 11:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

LOL not a chance

Agree with everything here. I quite liked 'Fireworks' but Strawberry Jam was unpleasant, and MPP only had about 2-3 good songs in a mire of bad production choices and over-precious lyrics. I will vouch very much for the concurrent 'What Would I Want, Sky' EP, which seemed to nail that direction a lot better and is just a nicer record overall.

cranking "brothersport" and imagining recent opinions as hipster runoff posts ca. 09

feels sounded like arcade fire is what happened

I got into them at the time of Strawberry Jam & Person Pitch, and I'm still generally fond of those records, as well as Sung Tongs and parts of Feels. Also I still regard MPP as a major achievement for them. Saw them at the Troubadour when they toured that album and it ranks among my favorite all-time concerts. Just thrilling.

That said... I've been ambivalent at best to anything they've done, as a group or solo, since then. And I saw Avey Tare and PB do the 10th anniversary tour for Sung Tongs a year or two back and found the whole thing really infantile. I probably posted about it upthread somewhere. And though I feel nostalgic for that album and SJ and MPP, I truly don't pull out any of their records with much regularity any more.

I actually liked Painting With quite a bit, it's not great but I probably listen to it more than MPP these days

fwiw I think "Lion in a Coma" is the high point of their career

Feels is great, all that crawling under the surface, like something on your skin

Wow, I love their dense psych stuff but I often skip Lion!

here's my MPP God Mode playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1V8PN4AHytamvJYvwoBXUR?si=LZvpjE44RDuvvpdQXJ7dDg

Basically cut out the more formless and cloying bits and replaced them with cuts from Fall Be Kind. I'd happily listen to this

Seriously though, listening to these songs in this order is so much more enjoyable to me:

Graze
Brothersport
What Would I Want Sky
On A Highway
Bluish
Lion In A Coma
I Think I Can
No More Runnin

short and sweet at 43 minutes but it opens and concludes nicely and no adobe slabs

for the late period haters (I'm not), don't sleep on ODDSAC

I have not listened to ODDSAC since seeing it in a theater but I recall enjoying! It led to a personal goal to visit the state park in PA where they filmed the scene with all the boulders. Finally achieved a few years later, psychedelically enhanced iirc

a couple things

1) maybe it's the herbal supplement but I've finally started to connect with these guys as "the music of childhood"...particularly there's something about the bass sounds they use, those clunky little Atari noises that for me really do seem to trigger memories of being like, 4 years old. its hard to explain but there's something about that sound that hits me in a weird place.

2) Painting With is a great little record, I think I like it more than any of 'em save for MPP and maybe Feels. I like that winky-wonky noise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5iJ9wt4paY

New single... sounds great?! Finally some production with a bit of breathing room in it.

My guess is they have been chowing down heavy on The Dead.

Best thing I've heard out of them in years.

This is the step they needed to take.

Painting With was cluttered and exhausting

And most of the soundtrack side stuff they’ve done since then has been a shrug at best

This is good, I dig it. I really haven't enjoyed an AnCo release since MPP (I know, we are all supposed to hate that one) and haven't loved one unreservedly since Strawberry Jams. Looking forward to the new one now though.