I guess Panda Bear has finally ended his sabbatical from the guitar. Tomboy, the single from his upcoming LP of the same name, seems to be a combination of several elements of PB’s career. First, we see elements of the almost tribal fury we were left with on I Think I Can from Animal Collective’s Fall Be Kind EP. Second, we see Panda Bear’s impeccable ear for sampling intact from his last LP, Person Pitch. Third, we see his aforementioned return of the use of guitar in his solo outings. All and all, Tomboy is probably my most anticipated album of the year when it drops in September.
Jane was the collaboration between Animal Collective’s Panda Bear and some miscellaneous DJ I won’t even bother to name drop. Unlike most side projects from the Animal Collective ilk that typically sound like Megatron getting slowly eaten by a garbage disposal, this is a more palatable offshoot. This is the type of ambient music I put on specifically to ignore when I need to get some work done.
Also, put another name on the list of people who owe Brian Eno a thank-you note.
Outside of a truly horrific Animal Collective remixof Peacebone he penned, I don’t know anything about German DJ Pantha Du Prince. You can certainly draw some parallels between he and AC though. All of the textured-samples and droning melodies you’d expect from an Animal Collective song are present and accounted for; only someone cut the vocal track and moved your speakers to the bottom level of a European cathedral’s catacombs. The entire album this is off of (entitled Black Noise) is great music to throw on when you need to get some coding done, which should really make it popular to about .00000000069% of the electronica-fan population.
AC’s Panda Bear must have dug it though. He has guest vocals on this track.
An obligatory Animal Collective selection given the fact that somebody spilled whiteout all over Harrisonburg this morning. This is one of AC’s more organic sounding songs; it’s pretty nifty what you can do with acoustic guitar, a few drums, and 4-part harmony via tribal moaning. Eskimo seduction music.
I know I’ve been really laying Animal Collective thick as of late; but bare with me. Their Fall Be Kind EP just leaked and I am break-dancing in my goddamn Laz-E-Boy at some of the new tracks they’ve dropped . Seriously. Fucking Merriweather Post Pavilion already wrapped up album of year within the first few weeks of January and now Animal Collective is closing out the year with a cute little reminder of how hard they just choose to get down. Gotta appreciate that kind of fan service.
This song is a fucking sunset-down, bottles-up slow jam. For the first couple mintutes, your not quite sure what the fuck Animal Collective wants of you. Should I be brooding under the weight under my own self doubt? Don’t worry about it humble listener! After a few mintutes of drum breaks, Panda Bear decides to cut the bullshit when he drops a sample of his own damn vocals repeating “what would I want? sky”. What the fuck does that even mean you ask? If you have to ask, you aren’t slow-moshing intensly enough.
Seriously, I can’t even finish typing this description efficiently because I’m doing it with one hand; as I listen to this song, one hand inexplicably is in the sky raging out, horns up; I can’t even control this shit its become part of my damn muscle memory.
I started this site, so I reserve the liberty to post some self-indulgent shit that nobody else will like, alright?!
This song sums up what everyone hates about Animal Collective in one pocket-sized reference guide:
Really short piano loop played uninterrupted for 6 minutes with droning, dissonant singing over top.
Completely random noises that show no reverence for time signature– noises that sound like a food processor having sex with a radio transistor.
Chorus that destroys any semblance of melody. Completely haphazard, rhythm-devoid drumming underneath the wailing of “CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO”
I get all of that. Really. But something about this song captures an emotional quality to it that I can’t get out of listening to any other song. That’s something you can’t quantify.
-jakeyp
Live version after the leap; but I doubt any of you will make it that far:
Animal Collective just released (11 months after the fact) a music video for In The Flowers, the opening track off of their early-2009 hit Merriweather Post Pavillion. I was kind of shocked to learn of it when I cccliqued onto pitchfork this morning, because In The Flowers definitely isn’t the type of radio-friendly track you’d end up crafting a video for, despite it being my favorite track off of MPP. Noticed how I tried to slip that admission in there? Don’t get me wrong– My Girls is a hell of a track; probably one of the most solid of their careers. Something about that song can even tap the toes of the most venomous of Animal Collective haters, and I’m convinced it can be used by the United Nations as a peacekeeping measure. If anything can convince the Israelites and the Palestinians to stop their aggressions and hold a unified bilateral break-dancing and candy conference, its definitely My Girls.
In The Flowers of its own ilk though because its a marriage between the Animal Collective of the past and the new songwriting structures they permeated throughout the new album. The song seemingly opens up on the road to nowhere with menacing, pitch wavering guitar that meanders the precipice between sweet and caustic. Any fan of of the band knows, and part of the reason the band is so divisive, is that an Animal Collective song can meander on like this for a solid 8 minutes before the song ends, not really going anywhere after building up all that tension. In the Flowers seems to be of the same ilk until Panda Bear decides “If I could just leave my body for the night” and the song’s floodgates open into an explosion of carnival lights, LSD fog and concentrated joy. Animal Collective wanted you to know that this was going to be unlike any of there other albums, and that In The Flowers would pay it’s built tension off with senses of release. The next 10 songs proved it as one of the best albums of not only 2009, but perhaps the decade.
I stumbled over Atlas Sound during an obligatory search for Animal Collective clones on last.fm– despite the fact that by being complete mind-fucks, I think Animal Collective has covered their tracks enough to make them unimitatable. Regardless, Atlas Sound (AKA Bradford Cox) is pretty good in his own right. The cat popped up on the last.fm search because he did a cute Beach Boys-esque bubblepop song with AC’s Panda Bear called Walkabout. Walkabout sounds like the soundtrack to a series of 80′s era cheerleaders doing cartwheels and eating ice-cream down some sunny boardwalk; which could be horrifying or not depending on your perspective. While the song is definitely cute and all, Panda Bear does the whole “overtly earnest lyrics” game a lot better on his own.
The real collaboration of note on Atlas Sound’s new album “Logos” is the one with Stereolab’s Laetita Sadier called Quick Canal. The whole damn song sounds as though its constantly tripping the rift between the different states of consciousness– like a kind of Enya-laced elevator music that your brain plays while they switch the reels between dreams. Synthesizers breathe and sigh with Sadier while she a conversation with herself in a language so incomprehensible you have to assume shes talking about something too gorgeous to be in English. The highlight of the song is 4 minutes in when the song suddenly explodes with powerful shoe-gaze fuzz that valiantly attempts to provide a counterpoint to Sadier’s icelandic-alto argument for the rest of the song.
I’ve lost myself in this track far too many times; 8 minute intervals of my life that Cox and Sadier are gradually leeching from me.
