Thoughts About Animal Collective

I used to listen to a good deal of Animal Collective. Their music avoids the complexity of, say, Amon Tobin electronica, so I could still get something out of it in a noisy school bus at  8 a.m. through ipod earbuds, but it also avoided the predictability of its alt rock predecessors who more than anything at that point in my life felt like rifling through seas of plastic wrapped and discounted Sam's Town CDs at a multimedia store. Hearing Animal Collective felt like entering a shady forest and ending up somewhere warm and inviting, which was something I would have described as a hobby of mine back in 2008.

The collective has three main members: Avey Tare, Geologist, and Panda Bear. The name "Avey Tare" always kind of sounded like Tex Avery to me, and evokes images of wacky cartoons. Tearing is what Avey does a lot with his voice, because he screams quite often. He has the most extravagant sonic presence. Geologist doesn't sing as far as I know, and in live performances is hunched over a sound board, wearing a headlamp. He is often at the center of the stage, but because he is just fiddling with buttons, it almost seems like he isn't participating in creating the music. He feels distant, creating a landscape and looking at frogs. This is a good thing. I think all bands should feature a member whose presence doesn't make sense, but that you are happy for anyway. Finally, Panda Bear has the softer voice of the two lead singers, and his solo career work has always been the most commercially successful. Like a panda bear, he is accessible and universally appreciated but also somewhat rare, inhabiting a space just outside of pop culture's spotlight, such as on track 12 of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories.

To me, the push and pull between Panda Bear's accessibility and Avey Tare's extravagance is what defines their sound and makes it so good. An example of this dichotomy is apparent in their album art, such as Strawberry Jam, which features a colourful splash of berries mashed together. It looks tasty, but it also looks like a mess. The imagery that surrounds the band is, I think, one of the things that separates them from other psychedelic musicians and made them more commercially successful than some of their peers. I feel that iconography goes a long way in selling a band and can really give an air of cohesion to music created under various hallucinogenics.

Like most psychedelia, travel is an important part of the experience. When Avey Tare sings "It's not my words that you should follow it's your insides...insides...insides..." on Wishbone, the echo evokes a feeling of travel through the mind (or maybe organs).  In The Flowers evokes a separation from it: "If I could just leave my body for a while". The the lyrics are mirrored by an ensuing polyrhythmic section where an arpeggiator and the percussion move at different time signatures. Beautiful, but also kind of a mess.

At it's best, AC music (and music I like in general) feels like an out of body experience. It is transporting. The first song I heard from them, Fireworks, took me from my school bus to an exploding and colourful night sky what with it's clashing symbols and sporadic shouts.

Their lyrics are almost always playful, such as the call and response of "kitty" / "meow" that closes their song Leaf House. They also tend to lay out their emotions in the simplest form possible such as on Guys Eyes where Panda Bear sings: "I really want to do just what my body needs to" / "I want to show to my girl that I need her", or on their 53 second song College where is sung, in a harmony: "You don't have to go to college".

The problem with constructing a mental image of a band is that is there is no way for them to cater to this image in future releases, and things will stray from the ideal. And even if Animal Collective saw themselves the way I did in 2008, it is clear from their interviews that catering to fans is the last thing they're interested in.

After a self-titled and melodic solo album in 2010 (that I really enjoyed), the return of Panda Bear to the collective felt like a desire for him to have fun again, letting Avey Tare's insanity take full reign, which he literally does in the music video for their next album's single as he rides a dune buggy through a desert wearing clown makeup and a giant monster head for good measure. Like Panda Bear, I too was looking forward to hearing the beautiful and the zany mesh together again. Tare is almost always the lead singer for the band, but with Centipede Hertz (2012) it felt like they were putting him front and center. Even Geologist's nature soundscapes seemed drowned out by the Tare train.

Painting With (2016) continued this trend, but embraced in a much more literal fashion the band's relationship with the art world. The collective always had an association with art houses and it feels like their only performances occur in museums. But calling their album Painting With and the single FloriDada was a clear statement that Art was what the band was all about now.

These days I don't have the focus to appreciate art. I still think about it though, like that one time that guy took his clothes off in Silvia Plath's The Bell Jar. These days I just listen to video game music, letting the dulcet tones of Yoko Shimomura's Kingdom Hearts soundtracks caress my fragile ego.
I originally wanted this post to be about giving the two latest AC records a chance, and providing my thoughts on them. But I just don't have the patience. It has become a real 'it's not you it's me' situation with alt rock for me these days. I haven't even listened to A Moon Shaped Pool yet.

There is a fine line between being "fringe" and being "artsy". You have to understand, when I discovered Animal Collective, I was indeed amazed at how different and daring their sound was. I really felt like they were the most original and innovative artists out there. Since their last album was made over days of confinement in a room walled with dinosaur shadow puppets, it is not fair to say the band isn't creative anymore. But when watching a Panda Bear performance at the MoMA and being uncertain whether he is giving a performance or a keynote, I just can't shake the feeling that my beautiful and messy animal children have been domesticated.