words: Jamie Milton
originally scribed for gigwise
Let’s cut the clichéd expressions some slack. There are very few times when you can bring out the “…and look at you now!“, pre/post-makeover shot from not-much-of-a-looker to hubba-hubba-God-bless-Rimmel-London, but now’s one of them. Animal Collective started 2009 as a cult band, celebrated by the majority of their listeners who knew their beloved were on the fringe of something much greater. And alas, here they are now, rounding off a year of critical acclaim and tolerance of the word “hype”, certified as a band who polarize opinion. Now, everyone has something to say about Animal Collective.
And now for something completely different.
The trio were accused of streamlining their music on ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion‘, creating pop songs (“heaven forbid!”) and selfishly waving goodbye to the experimenting guts that defined the band in the past. Here, we witness a return to methods of old on ‘Fall Be Kind‘, a merging of the glossy, velvet tongue from the latest album with a more tasteful knack for variety and alternatives, such as that found on ‘Feels‘.
EP’s are very often a means of re-assuring a group of fans who might have felt let down by a previous release. ‘Fall Be Kind’ does seem to attempt that, not least achieve that, only offering three minutes of rich, succinct pop in the climax of ‘What Would I Want? Sky‘. That may be the finest three minutes the band have recorded to date; Avey Tare’s vocals float on its back above the Grateful Dead samples and the bells and the cries – the line “I should be floating but I’m weighted by thinking” encompassing what Animal Collective always have been and always will be about.
But the rest of this collection of songs tilts its head towards elongation and the switching of one mood to another. Take ‘Graze’ as the perfect example: the opener breathes warm synthetic air around you for the first half before erupting into a, brace yourself, pan-flute solo. And yes, it might be the best (the only) pan-flute solo recorded in history but most importantly it shows the group succumbing to their ways of old whilst completely re-inventing their scope of sound at the same time.
But ‘Fall Be Kind’ does make every effort of maintaining its two feet in the headscape of ‘Merriweather…’. The theme of daily life, routine, normality that defined January’s album resounds in ‘On A Highway’. Exposing perhaps Avey Tare’s most personal batch of lyrics to date, telling the tale of a band touring, becoming anxious, sleepy. He talks of letting “some hash relax me” and his envy of “Noah’s dreaming”. It’s a removal from the natural/nautical imagery that seems to creep into every one of the band’s rhyming couplets. A very exclusive tale of coping with monotony.
And quite significantly this shows Animal Collective continuing to break the doors down, to evolve into something they never thought themselves capable of a few years back. The decade has been theirs in which to progress forward from leftfield acoustic-bred lullabies to glossy displays of summer-pop. Realistically, you can only expect them to continue to do the same. And of course, await the clichéd expression (every review of this EP should have one); ‘Fall Be Kind‘ rounds off the year of their lives on an absolute high.
8.7
It seems funny that Animal Collective choose to release their music for the grimmest of months. January and December – the start of winter and the end of warmth. Their songs are sun-appropriate, uplifting, life-affirming and yet every time I listen to ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’, it works best when I’m chilly. ‘Fall Be Kind‘ sweetly infuses abstract patterns with the deep bass notes and striking vocal harmonics that helped define the previous album. Only on ‘Fall Be Kind’ we get to see a real significant shift towards less pacey, pop-orientated territory. It’s not their most accessible work to date – ok, it’s nothing on the band’s early material, but it certainly falls back on old times after the infectious instant likability of ‘MPP’ allowed certain “sell out” accusations to gather force.
In many ways these songs sound more comfortable when associated with ‘Feels‘; they’re elongated, evolving and far from straight to the point. Opener ‘Graze‘ allows an almighty sound shift in its latter half, from smooth, deep cries of triumph to tip-toeing percussion and a tribal party spirit. This isn’t quite ‘Feels’ with more gadgets though: ‘What Would I Want? Sky’ is very much amongst the three-piece’s latest work, crafting a Grateful Dead sample with an exquisite vocal performance from Avey Tare. There are lyrics, there’s a hook that keeps and it’s all formed with samplers. This is more Brothersport than Leaf House.
But it’s still a sure-fire exit from the material of late. And that sort of move could be judged as moronic or merely, the right thing to do. Animal Collective are never going to be chart toppers. More likely, they’ll be a group looked upon in decades to come as innovators, opinion-splitters, forward-thinkers. And so to continue upon this route of shortening the song length, tightening the ropes, would be a poor choice. After all, when have Animal Collective ever decided to stick to the same sound over the course of more than one release? Never.
Initial thoughts rating:
8.5
Take Three
- Graze
- What Would I Want? Sky
- I Think I Can
I C I C L E S
LYRICS: Jan ‘09 Best-Of
words: Jamie Milton, Alex Kapronas, Antony Hegarty, Avey Tare
We had a ‘lyrics of the week’ feature going on a while back but we sort of left it lagging due to our inability to find the very best lyrics. We found ourselves wanting to use the same artists over and over again and we saw it as a bit of filler in terms of blog material. But we still adore the good written word. January was excellent musically but only a couple of times did we stop in our tracks, and rewind to listen to a certain sentence one more time.
Here are those couple though:
————————————————————————-
“Oh aeon
Love my father
For my father is myself
IM GETTIN LOST
IN YR CURRRLS
LIVE: Animal Collective – Brighton Concorde – Jan 15th 2009
words: Jamie Milton
originally scribed for gigwise
top photo: acb
You get the feeling that amongst the 500+ crowd awaiting an appearance from the buzz-band of the year thus far, that some of them are expecting one of the most staggering live performances they’ll ever claim to have witnessed. You prepare to be taken away by Animal Collective on the live circuit just as you would from listening to one of their records; their sound, so inhuman yet so unbelievably natural that you urge to be swept along with the sample-fused beauty of it all. At times during tonight’s show you really are lost in a swarm of uplifting spirits, no substances required. At times you really do pinch yourself to check whether what’s right before you is actually there. Close your eyes and occasionally optical-illusions form, illusions akin to the band’s most recent album artwork, simply due to the rate at which the elaborate light show gives everything it has. Dancing like a maniac to something so sonically wrong at first glance yet something that feels so right, is about as good as it gets when it comes to gigs.
But Avey Tare and co. start slowly. Even the ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ standout-track ‘My Girls’ never kicks off like it should. Panda Bear looked at times frustrated, at times bored. But then something clicks. Either Geologist turns the bass up or the following songs just have that little more oomph when played live. But what’s certain is, what was at one point heading for a major disappointment, suddenly becomes as awesome as it had once promised. It arrives in the
form of the bass-heavy ‘Also Frightened’. The audience yelp in unison to Avey Tare, the tempo is raised steadily and finally the crowd begin to lose themselves and the band clearly get in the mood to impress.
What’s most notable about ‘Merriweather…’ is the sheer power of the bass. It rises above the many other elements, including the thousands of summery-samples incorporated into each song. And once that bass is turned up a notch, the highlights on the band’s ninth album come to life like you never thought capable. ‘Summertime Clothes’ is as likeable and dance-inducing as expected, ‘Lion In A Coma’ is exceeded on stage, mainly thanks to Avey Tare’s vocals being raised up an octave in unexpected fashion. Exciting as it is, the material played from the ninth album sounds patchy at times, requiring a few more performances before it can come to life. Th
is is confirmed when the highlight of the set, ‘Fireworks’, from the previous record, raises the most enjoyable 10-minute-segment of the set. Lengthy, improvised at times but always hearty, it’s the finest example of the band’s great knack for tackling spontaneouity, flawlessly.
And the mood keeps on heightening, the bar keeps being raised and you almost want to persuade the band to finish on a high, due to the small likelihood of the performance getting even better. It seems most appropriate, when the three-piece play ‘Brothersport’. The eccentric crowd enter into a frenzy, a mass of half-naked bodies jump as high as possible, in complete contrast to the band’s London performance, which consisted of a horribly static crowd, apparently. Once that closes, the band promptly exit. But a resounding jeer seems to persuade them back on-stage. The crowd remain ecstatic, almost too so. When you begin to wonder whether you’re going to end up shouting lyrics back at Panda Bear in an Oasis-esque, “let’s ‘ave it” manner, the band instead decide to devote their encore to more low-key yet equally as impressive efforts. ‘Leaf House’, a crowd favourite but one not capable of inspiring someone to accidentally break someone’s saw, wraps things up perfectly. You exit the Concorde to repeated mutters of “spiritual experience”, “arty but not farty” and “I think I might faint”.
It’s difficult to decide whether you’d have been better off dancing like a lunatic or oppositely, standing still and simply appreciatively witnessing their performance. Either way, jumping endlessly or not, you exit the venue having got what you came for; a breathtaking performance.
mp3: Animal Collective – Lion In A Coma (zshare)
[Buy 'Merriweather Post Pavilion']
M I N D B L O W N
ALBUM: Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
words: Jamie Milton
initial thoughts review
‘brothersport’ track review
Ever see that evolution of dance video? Of course you did. It gave us a comical but all the more fascinating insight into just how much one thing can change. So how about pop music? Whoever’s been at its helm over the last 50/60 years since it emerged as the dollar’s genre of choice has done something different, adjusting it into something fresh and exciting, always at a stage when the chances of said occurring look pretty slim. I won’t declare pop to be in a fragile state currently but with this “80’s revival” having just gone a little bit too far, “it’s time for change”. And it’s really quite brilliant that the ones that look to have done a master-stroke in perhaps changing the genre once more are one of the most alternative, experimental acts around today.
Let’s not get out of our depth by calling ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ a pop record. It might be Animal Collective’s most commercially-inclined work to date but it doesn’t consistently follow pop conventions or most essentially, ask for your money. Instead it inhales the finer things of the genre, as well as many others, and the album’s output is a well-bred combination of its input in the form of a dense multiplier of new ideas through hefty use of sampling and dreamy electronically enhanced vocal melodies. And you can imagine “forward-thinking” pop artists taking note right now.
Animal Collective’s appeal has always been that they’ve thought outside the box. And for their standards, ‘Merriweather…’ is their least groundbreaking work to date, from an outsider’s view. Nothing makes you uncomfortable or nervy like ‘Strawberry Jam’ or ‘Sung Tongs’ could and nothing sounds so drastically different that the preferable option is to just stop listening instead of immersing yourself in what could turn out to be something brilliant. Instead, this time the three-piece (excluding “Deakin” on this occasion) have merged previous ideas whilst coming up with something entirely new. And it’s really hard to tell quite how they did it.
We’ve seen hints of what’s become on ‘Merriweather…’ before; through their emergetic live shows and in particular, Panda Bear’s very own ‘Person Pitch’, an album that completely out-did Avey Tare’s solo work in terms of critical acclaim, songwriting quality, everything. In ‘Summertime Clothes’ you get given a chance to recite the 30° heat and the relaxation that I at least, associated so fondly with Noah Lennox’s creation. Jerky electronics emerge shortly after a dictaphone-sample of waves, children; you can always picture smiles. And ‘Daily Routine’, a slightly darker affair, was originally set aside as a Panda Bear song for future works. You just get the idea that the band all had a sit down and raised the issue; “Hey Noah, you don’t suppose you could give us any ideas, do you?”
Preferably you should be listening to the record accompanied by basking sunlight and dense beaches but that’s obviously hard to come by unless you’re from Australia at the moment. But you do occasionally get the feeling that we might just had the “sound of the summer” already without realising it. With a freezing cold window and far-too-thin curtains by your side, the album doesn’t have such an impact as a cloudless blue sky would. That’s not to say you can’t enjoy the work whatsoever; just perhaps not to the same extent. All the less, energetic highlights (‘Brothersport’ and ‘My Girls’) combine with ambient drones of calm (‘No More Runnin’, the climax of ‘Daily Routine’) into an album so narrow in scope of sounds but so adventurous in ideas.
It’s difficult to pick a favourite mood or even a favourite song, at that. A combination of two might just be an answer to that. ‘Daily Routine’ begins with a crunching, dis-jointed organ line before emerging into a combination of heavy beats and rhythmically-aware vocals from Panda Bear. It further progresses into a blissfully, increasingly abstract wave of noise before eventually closing to the sound of a siren. That’s a lot to get your head round in six minutes. The soothing yet fidgety number ‘Bluish’ is equally ambitious in its meeting of both relaxation and eagerness, with similarly impressive results. But it is the fire-starting frenzied side of the record that stands head and shoulders above all – ‘Brothersport’, ‘My Girls’ and the sheer intent during the climax of ‘In The Flowers’ kick you into action, require your attention; they’re the ones that really make an impact. The opener commences in a sort of hungover-state; dreamy and not quite with it entirely. But the latter half of the song is a wiping away of any doubts fans had towards the album, a confirmation of the ridiculous level of buzz surrounding the band, all through the form of a joyful clenched fist of electronic rage. Thenafter, there’s never a dull moment, especially not in closer ‘Brothersport’, which almost provokes an out-of-body experience. It gets you that carried away.
And so the only thing left to say is some sort of over-blown statement about how this album will change the world. Go ahead, call it your favourite album of all time. Go ahead, call it worthy of a 9.6 from the influential Pitchfork. Go ahead, call it undoubtedly one of the best albums of the 21st century. You might even be right when we look back on this.
9.5
mp3: Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes (zshare)
[buy 'Merriweather Post Pavilion']
“!”
TRACK REVIEW: Animal Collective – Brothersport
words: Jamie Milton
I know it was only a few hours ago that I posted this track below (only for it to be requested to be taken down by the “web sheriff”, complete party maniac that one), but since, it is the only, and I mean only thing that’s been playing on my iPod to and from college. Perhaps it’s just because I’m overly-excited at finally hearing some new AC or perhaps it’s because this is miraculously good, for crying out loud!
Panda Bear’s success last year has clearly exerted itself to give him some room to fit in his own dreamy ideas. This may only occur on one twelth of ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’ but regardless, this on its own, is enough of an excuse to divert praise in his direction only. Avey Tare however prevents us from doing so, his occasional gleeful yelp making this a song of two halves. All this whilst Geologist remains suitably subdued as his contribution lies in the summery samples rippling through the scene in the background, an integral part none the less.
Contributions can be as diverse or equal as they want between the four recording members, nonetheless all you can concentrate on is the uncontrollable tapping of each foot, the unusually enthusiastic punching of arms by your tenth listen, and the instant memory of some truly indistinguishable lyrics inviting themselves to the party.
The Collective dive into the seas of repetition more so than ever before, yet remain as intriguing as ever. It’s a triumphant manner in which to close a record which hopefully lives up to this last burst of energy. And it’s some burst.
10
PLAY: Animal Collective – Brothersport (live bootleg)
[Buy 'Animal Collective' discography]
“open up your, open up your, open up your, open up your!”
NEW TO US: Animal Collective – Brothersport (Studio Version)
words: Jamie Milton
gorillavsbear unleashed this gem upon us yesterday, coming in the middle of a lovely French podcast. But we used some tools to work our way into that rubble and source out the brand new Animal Collective treat on its own. It’s the closer of what shall probably be one of the best albums of 2009, ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’, and if it represents what’ll be played to us prior to the cresendo, we have a lot in store.
The live version of this track showed enough promise in the first place to wet our appetites but here Panda Bear and co. meddle with repetition, perhaps more so than on previous material. A dare I say it, tribal, yet authentic sound dominates proceedings as the hair begins to stand on the back of your neck every time Avey Tare lets out a triumphant yelp.
Call it a step away from the messy yet fascinating material on ‘Strawberry Jam’, ‘Brother Sport’ sounds more determined, less gritty, more modern, less directionless, more interesting, somehow, than last year’s glorious album.
PLAY: Animal Collective – Brothersport [Studio Version] (zshare) [ysi]
[Buy Animal Collective discography]
MFM @ HYPEM
