animal collective

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.

(Not ALL of the side stuff has been bad but a lot of it had been just sorta there)

I'm not really sure why the ilx hivemind (unless it went beyond that somewhere) decided we are supposed to hate MPP. Seemed a lot like a predictable anti-hype backlash contrarian thing, but it's not like I asked around or anything. I personally don't have strong feelings about that album one way or another, except that I liked how it relatively wasn't so busy and frantic. To that point, this new track seems like a nice way to mature their sound! Cool development.

I don’t think MPP is inherently bad - whenever I come back to it (intentionally or when Apple Music shunts me to a track) it’s a thrill. At the time I was writing about it and had been heavily anticipating it and … just burnt myself out on it.

I'm probably the rare person here who loved Centipede Hz. I've probably posted about it somewhere, but never gotten any bites. I never really jumped onto the backlash wagon with them, but their music just resonated less with me over time. This new song is pretty cool, if not super distinct. My interest is piqued, though.

Painting With was cluttered and exhausting

― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 9:42 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yea I wanna revise my opinion on this the album really does wear you out if you listen to it at once, same boing-boing-boing-boing rhythms and alternating vocals on every track. I do think the songs are mostly good though, especially the side openers.

Centipede Hz is the one I think that needs re-evaluation, I think a lot of people were suffering from AnCo burnout at the time and maybe didn't appreciate how freaky this album gets. it's quickly becoming a favorite

new song sounds quite nice. i think it would be cool if they did something less hyperactive w/o being all droney and weird

Good song except the simple repetitive melody

CHz has definitely grown on me over the years

new song is ok

mpp is good, just not the masterpiece it was hyped in the press as at the time. chz is ok, there's some good stuff on it but it's a little overwhelmingly dense & not as strong as what came before.

there are apparently two new albums on the way next year, not just time skiffs. story is they have a ton of new material but weren't happy with their attempts to record half of it remotely during the pandemic. they've been playing a lot more than just the time skiffs material live.

Wide Eyed from CHz is one of my favorite AnCo tracks ever, they should let Deak sing more

My favorite AC thing in the last while is actually the Deakin solo record

Deakin is back for this song.

New track is very pretty, love the Rhodes on it

Prester John” is the result of two distinct songs—one by Avey Tare and one by Panda Bear—woven together

i dont get how this (from pitchfork) could be true.. its just one melody the whole time?

nice melody though

Cautiously optimistic. This sounds better than most of their material from the past decade, however Deakin is not involved in the whole album and this is described as the best song from fans who’ve apparently heard pretty much the whole record live at this point?

make ya monkey rich

whos excited for the new album. should I start a thread er nah

I feel bad for rejecting Animal Collective post Centipede Hz. I think I owe it to them for all the good times to check this new one out.

Loved Avey Tare's Eucalyptus whenever that came out. Up there with my favourites from the AnCo catalogue. Ambient AnCo > Chaotic AnCo = Pop AnCo

New thread idea: rank AnCo styles: Ambient, Noise, Pop, Jam
I would like to resubmit: ambient > jam > noise = pop

I think Centipede might actually be my favorite album of theirs

It's got some tight melody's I'll give it that. I put it on a few months ago and thought it had aged well.

This Prester John track is great

I really love a lot of the Centipede tracks - Wide Eyed and Monkey Riches especially - but I've really started to appreciate Rosie Oh sounding like a really fucked up thing from Ween's The Mollusk. like even Ween could never dream of something that mutated

Listened to Centipede HZ again on this threads inspiration. Anco at its most prog but damn can they spin a banging melody. Very tight collection of songs. OTM re: Ween comparison. Applesauce might be their best singalong, so many fun parts to put your voice to.
The album really fits into the PC Music era. Would love to hear a version of the album without any vocals as the instrumentation stands on its own as a highly developed world. Could see this hypothetical version released on warp as a new artist and pull in handsome reviews.

many years on, with some diversions and evidence to the contrary (what the hell is that ending to applesauce?), I am still convinced Avey Tare is a genius of songwriting, one of the best of 2000's. I regret the stigma that attached to AnCo which undervalued how great their songwriting really is (regardless of opinion on style).
Spirit they've gone is the miracle that proves my point. April and the phantom, Penny Dreadfuls and Alvin Row as the beginning of your songwriting output? Get out of here!

Speaking of reevaluations: Down There. Will take it above Person Pitch any day; it deserved an equal amount of praise. Laughing Hieroglyphic best song on depression? Best Anco Melody? Most appropriate production? Best use of accordion in pop? I'm not sure, but it makes you ask.

Okay sorry I know waxing lyrical on AnCo is a nono

agreed that spirit is absolutely remarkable for a debut/songwriting (never heard anything as simultaneously challenging/beautiful/dark/whimsical), but i fail to hear it in any other of their records regardless of the style... maybe 'feels' at a push...

I'd argue Tracks 4-8 on Strawberry Jam reflect Spirits essence pretty well. In particular Cuckoo Cuckoo feels like a shorter, high production value, amalgamation of the three spirit songs I mentioned.
The thing with spirit is that it couldn't be replicated because it was a coming of age album (all arguments to the contrary need to read through the lyrics again.) and the thing with coming of age is you can only do it once. A spirit 2.0 would not have the maturity present in making an album like that at their immature age. I don't have much time for Danse Manatee but I do think it was the right choice in their progression.

AnCo really wear their emotional growth/stages on their sleeves with each album. From the distance there is a clear storyline progressing in their discography. Centipede got hit because it was the first plateau in their emotional progression. relative plateau anyway because I think there were still some newly developed heart on sleeve moments.

Spirit carried on throughout their discography with the childhood motif in their lyrics. Spirit was the concentrate of lost innocence in lyrics which leak onto every album and define AnCo's lyrics.: ahhhh good country, doggy, slippi, banshee beat, #1 and cuckoo cuckoo, brother sport, applesauce, etc.

Spirit has a very unique sound to it, something that I think is only really possible in a debut album - everything is so crisp and paper thin but not in a way I think anyone would want to replicate. Outside of the very low bass everything seems to occupy this high frequency, it's like a chunk of it is missing or something. Avey's voice almost hasn't even dropped yet, he doesn't really sound like that on any other album. I have a live recording where they do "Alvin Row" and it's amazing & clearly they're a way better band...but it's not as ethereal as it is on the album.

fwiw I'm not sure how I rate it as an album. it does a really good job pissing me off right off the bat. its definitely got some magic to it though. personally, I feel their 5 best are Feels, Strawberry, MPP, Centipede, and Painting With. the 5 most recent lol

new album appears to have leaked. RYM people seem to like it. I suppose I'll grab a copy when it's actually out.

My poor ears just can't take the frequencies involved in 'Spirit They've Vanished' so I ran it through an audio cleanup plug-in and plucked out the two main offenders, at least I can listen to it now.

Pretty incredible to take off so hard as a band with spirit as their first album, don't think anyone could expect their MPP success 8 years on from this utterly strange debut. Forgot how abrasive the first track is, not their standout that's for sure. The noise and repetition does allow the title lyric and melody change at the 3:30 minute mark to hit harder than it should.

Written about this before, but I really believe Catcher in the Rye and Spirit They've Gone are two pieces cut from the same cloth.

new album is surprisingly good, a real return to form. plays to all their strengths while still breaking new ground for them & it's also the best they've ever sounded production-wise.

vibes this time are 'the 70s' and 'exotica', it's very lush & loose

that's awesome, I really liked the recent "We Go Back" single. hope the store has it in tomorrow

something was recently pointed out to me that blew my mind; proto-Animal Collective is not The Beach Boys, but rather the track "Schooldays" by Gentle Giant

whos excited for the new album. should I start a thread er nah

I think you should and still not too late

okay fine

lmao the picture they picked for this

Panda Bear shares 17-minute ambient track rejected by Calm app https://t.co/a6MV0trByL pic.twitter.com/oTR9RoTgp8

— THE LINE OF BEST FIT (@bestfitmusic) April 12, 2022

just saw them in Madison last night. it was really good!! incredible set list, lots of stuff from Time Skiffs plus like 3 new songs, one of which was a total showstopper. I didn't realize how much they fuck around with the arrangements live. cool crowd too, reminds me of a Ween crowd but younger. the lady next to me might've been the biggest AnCo fan on the planet.

Nice, I couldn't go and honestly I'm not much of a fan, but it seemed like kind of a crazy opportunity to see them in a relatively small venue, for not very much money. Glad it was a cool show.

listening to the new one. “prester john” knocked me on my ass! “cherokee” sounds very classic anco in my mind, the kind of sound that made me fall for this band when i was a teenager

yeah Time Skiffs is great!

Yikes.

Getting bad out there, friends.

pic.twitter.com/1AZGjgSluo

— Animal Collective (@anmlcollective) May 26, 2022

That's from May, isn't it?