Oh come on. I just feel like this place gets pretty predictable sometimes, and I don't think anyone can really argue with that. It's not like I'm excluding myself from that statement.

i knew you'd say that.

I'm not surprised.

animal collective isn't quite as bad as this review:

"At the break in "Winters Love", from Animal Collective's feral, sentimental Sung Tongs, when the guitar picks up and Avey Tare and Panda Bear's voices flail like children who know they'll never die, it occurs to me that youth isn't always wasted on the young. This is an old cliché, about how kids can never really appreciate the finer aspects of immaturity-- in fact, it's their immaturity and naiveté that all the gray adults crave like zombies. It's a child's lack of self-conscience and "common sense" that make them holy, just as it's an adult's knowledge of their own mortality that makes them a little bit dead. However, even if the sickly, aching adults might long for days spent wasting precious time and forgetting precious lessons, most of them wouldn't turn back the clock if given the chance. Youth isn't wasted on the young at all, because only kids on holiday could afford to leave their hearts exposed for so long, to sing as loudly and to take so much for granted. Rather, wisdom is wasted on the old." etc etc

i just drooled a little bit

Word, man. Just dont forget who has an open mind (and who got you in to that OTC show ) around here.

Um, no?

Yes.

Actually, it's more of an ache.

Okay, stopping now.

To me they are fun just as Half Japanese is fun. I dig both bands for when I'm just having one of those days and want to escape to a magical lollipop land.

Just a side note, Fickle Cycle is the 2nd b-side on the 'Grass' single. It was made the b-side not because they didn't like the track or anything.

It was actually made a b-side so that the Grass single would have a reason to be purchased. They're actually pretty proud of the song, from all things they've said about it on the 'Collected Animals' board.

Also, they didn't feel that it had a good home on the album, as it messed with the flow of the final tracklisting.

And though this thread seems to be mostly a AC bashing thread, I'll go on record as saying the 'Feels' is probably my favorite album of the past couple years.

You prefer it to "Sung Tongs"? I think "Sung Tongs" can't be fucked with and should stand alone as a really successfully quirky, freaky piece. "Feels" makes a lot more 'sense' structurally, but loses none of its magic. I think it's amazing.

Animal Collective is total escapist music, as Flying Rabbit suggested. "The Purple Bottle" rights me when I'm wrong.

It's sounding more and more like their more known / liked material does vary from this a bit. I'm not saying the band must be absolutely terrible, based on this one song. And I don't see how I can be that predictable, given that I hardly ever post about music. But hey. I take a shot at somebody's favorite band, and they shoot back. The difference between me and perhaps the senator is that I'll leave a lot of wiggle room in my premature judgement... I've only heard one song. One terrible, awful song. If I'd only heard one of George's sitar ramblings from the Beatles, I'd have a similar slant towards them too.

I haven't heard that one song, but if you don't like it, chances are you're not going to like the rest.

I want to agree with you, but the vigor with which people defend them means I'm probably missing something. I don't like that. Generally speaking, they're silly. And if a band's gonna be silly, then you've gotta buy into it, or else it's just... silly. So that buy-in is key. If I'd heard some of the less goofy stuff first, or had seen them put on a great live show, etc etc, then it'd buy them a lot of credit. But I doubt many people, open-minded or not, would hear Fickle Cycle and want to hear it again. Some, but not very many.

Just listened to about half of Purple Bottle and then deleted it.

You might be confusing 'silly' with what we who love Animal Collective identify as playful experimentation. Barring their first 2.5 records, which are far more strident (though no less colourful, but more hit-and-miss affairs), it's refreshing for me to hear a band experiment with consonant, harmonized sound. There's nothing so esoteric about what they do as to be alienating or only secretively rewarding. It's pop music that wears its process on its sleeve but is not weighed down by it. That's why I love it: because it's serious but lighthearted, not heavy.

You forgot about the awesome second half.

no thanks.

The "predictability" comment was more about the rapid-fire AC bashing by people who'd never heard the song in question.

And addressing Vegetable Man's comments that the song is actually pretty good... maybe. I've only listened to the "Grass" single a couple of times, and when I did I was really put off by the song "Must Be a Treeman" that precedes "Fickle Cycle".

I'm not saying that anyone here isn't open minded, that they don't listen to a wide variety of music, or that they should necessarily like or appreciate any particular band. But it's still pretty telling about someone's listening habits when they're so quick to label bands like Animal Collective and Deerhoof as being some of the most "pretentious", inaccessible, or "unlistenable" stuff out there. Animal Collective barely dips into the realm of pretense. In fact, both they and Deerhoof do quite a bit to reign in their experimental tendencies and filter them through pop song structures. A lot of the more "out there" groups don't even attempt (or are just unable) to engage or draw in the listener that way.

These aren't wanky, self-indulgent jam bands. They try things and they push things a little. AC might be settling into something of a "schtick", but prior to Feels, one would be hard-pressed to define just what that schtick would be.

And I know a lot of you guys like more traditional stuff and more songwriter-oriented stuff. It's not like I latch onto every wierd new band. I never got Xiu Xiu or the Fiery Furnaces. I'm not even sure why I'm trying to defend the merits of Animal Collective except that it seems my previous comments were taken the wrong way by the wrong people, and this has more to do with where I was coming from originally.

I'll second that entire comment.

I know this going to gain some flack, but in my eyes, what makes a Animal Collective album any different than the noodlings of Brian Wilson? Let me explain my reasoning. I feel that both were/are trying to break the mold of what is considered pop music. Taking the essesnce of what is widely considered pop, and perverting it in a interesting way, so that while you may sit there and listen to the song and be able to pick out parts, in your head, you'll be whirling and trying to dissect another less recognizable part. For me, this is the magic of the band. Sung Tongs is an amazing record, and one of my faves from last year. I remember I went into the record store, and for the most part, bought it on hype. When I got home I listened to it, and was blown away, and sat for a few more listens just picking apart the layers. I'm not saying that your experience will be as profound as mine, but its worth a listen.

Absolutely not.

BWAHAHAHA. Animal Collective and Deerhoof do not even approximate anything that sounds like "pop music".




...and some people feel refreshed after receiving a golden shower too, I suppose.

I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, but I have to wonder just how narrow your definition of pop is.

There are people out there who really dig deeply into all kinds of experimental and outsider music, and a lot of them are dismissing Feels as an "indie rock" record. It all depends on where you're coming from.

Good gawd, I love Animal Collective. Connecting the dots between Brian Wilson's style/arrangements and Sung Tongs isn't that far of a stretch or very difficult.

Feels sounds less campfire/spontaneous and is a bit more deliberate and focused than their previous work, so I can see the point of the folks detracting it as being "too Arcade Fire" and the like. But where else this year would you get a pop song - yes, "Grass" absolutely fits in my pop music world - that is all summery and ebullient, but has a chorus element that features primal screaming?

Just leave it at that.

This was a thread intended for naysayers.

You've got to be kidding me. What a joke.


Next, you're going to tell me that Whitehouse and Merzbow are also directly influenced by the sweet harmonies of the Beatles if I'd only listen and get past those dulcet but dissonant strains of buzzsaw.

Break me a fucking give.


Five years from now you're going to pull out your Animal Collective cd from the bottom of your cd collection, listen to it out of curiosity and say to yourself, "What the hell was I thinking?" before dropping it into the garbage.



Classic.