đŸŽ” How Good Are They Really đŸŽ” Animal Collective

Shots fired. I LOVE Dan Deacon. The second half of America is one of the best pieces of music of the last 10 years.

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I much prefer their EP’s to their albums, Fall Be Kind and Prospect Hummer are consistently great. Prospect’s title track is up there for my favourite song but Graze pips it, love the transformation from gauzy psychedelia into a ridiculously catchy bop

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Remember dragging my mates to see them on the Carling Stage at Leeds Festival in 2006 (between Feels and Strawberry Jam?) in a You gotta see these guys they’re amazing! sort of situation. Much as I loved them at the time, it was really, really poor. Just weird extended, unrecognisable jams and the tent was pretty much empty before it ended. It wasn’t like they were confrontationally out there, they just seemed bored as fuck and like they didn’t give a single shit.

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Prefer Panda Bear’s solo stuff.
I like what they are trying to do (“everything at once”), but only a select few can pull that off.
Those few being everything everything, siruismo and aphex twin.

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Person Pitch is good and I like Young Prayer and some other Panda Bear songs (Tropic of Cancer) but even though I was really really into Person Pitch when it came out and Animal Collective were a big deal at the time I never listened to them during that period. I checked them out at some point more recently and nothing stuck with me.

Curious as to who you are referring to here.

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Battles?

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Radiohead.

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Yeah they’re crap aren’t they. Strawberry Jam was alright i guess but overall they are rubbish. SO boring and even Strawberry Jam i struggle a bit with understanding what drew me in all those years ago. MPP was always dull - just never got what everyone was talking about.

Just about better than the Eagles but still, 1

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Don’t think I’ve heard them as there were too many bands around that time and it became impossible to keep up

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Possibly generous 5. Still totally love Feels and Sung Tongs. Don’t think I’ve ever been particularly disappointed by them. MPP is v. good
 but Centipede Hz is better. Father Time is one of their best songs, in my opinion.

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They’re one of those bands that are inextricably tied to moving to London and first year of uni for me, so I can’t really judge them objectively. I bought Feels (because it was the only one the local record shop had) after reading about them online and decided to give them a go live. Was expecting them to be quite folky so was a bit confused when they set up their gear and there were no drums, then was completely stunned when they played a booming, incredibly loud electronic set of mostly Strawberry Jam/MPP stuff. Saw them 3 times in quick succession and they were always spectacular, but have heard from a lot of people that they’ve been poor live.

Loved MPP when it came out and I think it still stands up. My favourite has always been Ark (formerly HCTI) though, has such a strange energy. Lost interest after Centipede Hz (which one of my friends very astutely said sounded like all the things that people had wrongly criticised them for in the past). Person Pitch and Tomboy are also great, tried that backwards one that Avey and his wife put out too but for fuck’s sake mate.

Wavering between a 4 and 5, can’t quite decide.

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Around 2016 they were a pretty good live act again for my money, saw them on that tour in Manchester. There’s a live recording of it on bandcamp which suggests the band were also fairly pleased with how that tour went!
No doubt they were piss poor at Primavera 2011 though and around that period. Prior to that I remember seeing them on the MPP tour in Liverpool and again at Glastonbury on the Park Stage around then too, both great shows imho.

MPP really was a watershed moment for them, pretty sure the MPP tour had them playing the Static Gallery in Liverpool which hold <150 people - that got swiftly upgraded to the Academy (which holds 10x that) after MPP blew up.

That run of Feels → SJ → MPP is brilliant and worth a 5. I’ll go out to bat for Centipede Hz too as i think it’s a really good album, the latter half particularly. Father Time, New Town Burnout which could be from a Panda Bear album, Pulleys, Amanita

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Reckon I’d probably quite like them. Couldn’t stand the hype about them around MPP time though so never actively listened to them. Make me think of American Apparel hoodies.

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Will end up repeating a lot of what I’ve said in the AC thread, but following them from Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished to at least the Fall Be Kind EP was a complete thrill. I can understand why those who jumped on at the critical frothing of the mouth over Merriweather Post Pavilion were bemused, because I think to really get the joy from that album you need to have followed the scrappy lofi noise pop band they were to being this kind of a big deal indie pop outfit. I remember them playing ‘My Girls’ on whatever the equivalent Saturday kids show of Live and Kicking was on the BBC at that point and it feeling totally surreal.

I genuinely think their (Avey and Panda Bear’s at least) debut Spirit They’re Gone is one of the most unique and influential experimental albums of the 2000s. A weird lightning in a bottle mix of lofi noise, electronic, folk, pop. With the standout feature that below it all there’s some real songwriting chops. They’re the kind of noise folk band who could go onto write a great pop album



and they kind of did. Via an array of constant album releases, EPs, singles, side projects. It was never really about consistency, it was about the joy of restless experimentation and constant reinvention. All done with a kind of wide eyed childish wonder that can be equal parts endearing and cloying. In the peak between Sung Tongs and MPP it really felt like everything they were doing was individual, weird and vital. They scrapped out releases in real time in live shows and what you got could be great or terrible but that was part of the fun. If you didn’t like it, there’d be another release along in weeks. And MPP felt so exciting exactly because it was pop music imagined through that lens, but it also kind of felt like a conclusion to that journey.

I think the biggest mistake they made was slowing down, taking big gaps between releases, working out albums in the studio rather than on stage, though perhaps that was inevitable as they grew up and had real life responsibilities. I don’t think Centipede Hz or Painting With are missteps in terms of the Animal Collective who churned out records, and had they been released with a few months gap after the last one, rather than several years, and they’d have been seen as other interesting experiments rather than failed attempts to recapture the magic.

I get the cynicism with their schtick, but I can’t really think of many bands that it was as exciting to follow during that period. I still enjoy a lot of that material now, but most of my love for the band comes from the buzz of following them during those years. For that they get a 5/5 for me.

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Pretty sure that @lastdino and @anon73286315 will back me up here but they’ve actually rather quietly been on a bit of a hot streak again recently through their EPs and solo stuff. Bridge to Quiet, Meeting of the Waters, Dolphin and Cows on Hourglass Pond are all excellent.

Think they have always done exactly what they wanted and fair play to them tbh. @littlebirds has put it much more eloquently than I can:

^ this sums them up perfectly imo.

I don’t listen to them as much as I used to and the live sets I saw on the Centipede and Painting With tours didn’t wow me but certainly weren’t awful. But there was a point where I was completely and utterly absorbed by their music and all the acts that they were associated with because everything sounded so gleeful and wild. And when I do stick them on now I still feel the same buzz. So yeah they’re a five for me too.

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I would do anything for Noah Lennox, he’s such a cool dude. Probably a 5, really important to me. Saw them live twice in 2016 and they were loads of fun, they had an extra lad on drums that gave it loads of momentum.

Some highlights: some of the repetitive, dreamy, mantra-type songs from Sung Tongs and Campire Songs; the build up and chord change in Banshee Beat; this perfect little gem:

I really like their concept-driven approach to making music, they’re such a sweet band man.

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They really were, the only downside was that they didn’t play ANY hits! (and no, Floridada does not count). I saw them headline End of the Road and it was fun but could have been a really great party set if they brought out the bangers.

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A 5 pure and true.

@littlebirds and @WizardLizard have summed up my feelings really eloquently already. A band that were never meant to be big, they were supposed to just dick about and have fun experimenting and making something new every time. The perceived downturn after MPP wasn’t anything new for them, they’d made some unlistenable shite after the wonderful Spirit They’re Gone, it was just that increased critical and commercial attention distorted the reality of what the band was.

I say ‘perceived downturn’ because since MPP we’ve had Painting With (good imo), Meeting of the Waters, Bridge to Quiet, Tomboy, Grim Reaper, Bouys, Cows on Hourglass Pond, Eucalyptus, Slasher Flicks, Sleep Cycle (I very much consider the solo releases to be Animal Collective). The boys are in a real purple patch atm and I’m really excited for the new album.

Also think they’ve bucked up their ideas on the live front. MPP tour was pants sure but as endlessly discussed on their thread the painting With tour was top top notch. Think they’ve clocked they need to deliver a little more on that front now.

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Tomboy is a belter for winter walks at night

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