So much to catch up on here:
captainlunatic wrote:
Excellent write-up on MPP. I think more than anything I love how good that album makes me feel. There aren't a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic anymore, but when I listen to MPP I think everything might actually work out beautifully and happily and wonderfully. It's such an amazing sonic world to visit, and I'm very thankful it exists
Thanks mate! More thoughts further down. I was really moved by your reflections on MPP/CHz. So glad MPP can still make you feel that way. It has a similar effect on me.
nothingmaster wrote:
blasted merriweather on my turntable and man it really is a miracle of production. they pushed the sound to this absurd size, yet it sounds so warm and organic. the samples are particularly masterfully applied, in how they instantly create this evocative world for the rest of the sonics to blend with.
It has to be the most sonically pleasing album of all time. The definition of 'ear-candy'.
blindmowing wrote:
MPP
because the mixing on this record is such a fucking mind trip it's so fascinating to listen to this album for all of the LAYERS...every listen can be a vastly different experience depending on what you focus on
the background effects on this thing are wild... give this a listen some time to ONLY listen to the random effects going on in the background if you haven't...it'll blow your mind
my most recent listen focused on Panda's drums. i'm sure there's some drum machine in there, but there is also A LOT of Panda drumming, and he spends a lot of it playing on the rims...
So true. I think I've probably heard this album over 200 times and still pick up on things I've never heard before.
blindmowing wrote:
there's an incredible detail i'd always missed on "Taste." the muddy kick drum (?) is constantly lagging and OFF BEAT. it's so disorientating and hypnotizing if you get locked in on it, because it goes without fail a microsecond off, then a microsecond back on beat, and keeps looping this off/on beat thing and it's a super small detail that will absolutely make the song for me every time i listen now
YES!!!! This is amazing. So hypnotising and such a brilliant little twist. Perfect example of this album's genius!
blindmowing wrote:
said this not too long ago, but the first 15 seconds of "Also Frightened" is peak AC
I don't think anyone here would disagree that the intro and outro of 'Also Frightened' are absolute peak AC. The whole song is really.
dio - yeh, I love how the studio versions have so much subtle live drumming going on. The programmed beats often take centre stage but Panda is jamming along most of the time with his usual brilliant flourishes.
Slippi's Applesauce wrote:
Finally listened to Down There. Always have liked this album a lot and never understood the muted reaction/vitriol around release. The first two songs have Avey at his most emotional and then his most melodic, a perfect contrast between the two. Oliver Twist may go a little overboard on vocal effects to some, but the song is great once you get to know it. What a melody!
I bloody love this album. I think it sometimes gets that lukewarm reaction because it is so understated compared to what people thought of as 'the Avey Tare sound'. At this stage people were expecting bangers like Fireworks and Summertime Clothes. Down There is a whole different thing. Also, the melody of Oliver Twist is genius. Especially the whole 'maybe the thing I need is the thing I've got' section. The effects just enhance it for me.
Slippi's Applesauce wrote:
The piano at the end of glass bottom boat is amazing.
I always imagine this section as like the closing moments of a tour of the swamp where the tour guide is thanking the guests and the boat is gently pulling into shore.
Slippi's Applesauce wrote:
Cemeteries feels like slowly canoeing at night past a… well, cemetery.
Yes! I always picture the scene that Screens accompanies in ODDSAC. Weird vampire Deeks slowly paddling in the dead of night.
Slippi's Applesauce wrote:
Love the swampy theme running throughout it. I’ve lived in Florida most of my life and it reminds me of taking kayaks or glass bottom boats (lol) and looking for alligators. Obviously there’s a lot more going on emotionally here in terms of relationships ending, but to me it’s a wonderous, swampy experience that brings me back to my childhood
I think you and I see this album in a very similar way.
roopn wrote:
Foxtrot: awesome write up on MPP. What a special moment for your first listen. I love that after so long the album still makes you so giddy. I'm curious, did you share the album with your wife, or is she ambivalent to AC?
Yeh we totally shared it! She is nowhere near as obsessive as me but she loves this album. She varies a bit of other AC releases (has to be the right setting/context) but she loves MPP. One other little story I didn't share in my massive MPP rant was that right at the end of our time in Japan we saw AC live at the Fuji Rock Festival. It was an absolute peak moment of my life. During My Girls we held each other and I cried. It was such an overwhelming moment. The culmination of probably the happiest year of my life. They closed the set with Fireworks and Bro Sport and I danced like a freak. This memory is up there with the birth of my first child as far as amazing memories go.
madameghostly wrote:
Centipede Hz: as someone who used to not think much of this album, how do people not like this album? well, i mean, i know how, demoitis is a hell of a thing, and even aside from that, 2010s AC seems to be the decade's worth of music everyone loves to hate, but still, HOW?!
Let me reiterate: I love this album! But there is a difference between an album I love (of which there are thousands) and an album that moves me and connects deeply with me in a profound way. CHz just never quite did that. Not like the previous 5.
madameghostly wrote:
i've come to love just about every song on here, with MAYBE the exception of Father Time and Mercury Man (yes, i'm a Pulleys enjoyer, completely disregard my opinions accordingly) and my favorites continue to be Wide Eyed and Monkey Riches
Mercury Man deserves your immediate re-evaluation.
scrambledgreggs wrote:
the CHz b-sides were so much more special to me than the album, I must have listened to each of them more than any album track when they first came out. when the Honeycomb/Gotham single surprise dropped I had randomly decided to do a juice fast for a day and then smoke a ton of weed so I remember the raw/voracious sound of them perfectly matched the rumbling hunger I was feeling in my stomach. but also honestly Honeycomb's harmonies were a perfect segue from the MPP to Centipede sound, with the "all the impossible places you'll go in your liiiiife LIIIFE LIIIIFE" part at the end really taking off in a way that a lot of the best moments of MPP did. but it also signaled the start of something new which was very exciting at the time as well
Honeycomb was always my favourite of the boots. I was mortified that it didn't make the cut.
scrambledgreggs wrote:
Gotham was also incredible, it kind of reminds me of Street Flash in terms of the garbled samples and abstract textures. so much attention to detail in that song as with most things the band has done. also loved that line about the ficus. and then Crimson, CHz's missing ballad moment, came as a bonus after I had already exhaustively played out the album tracks and was still craving more AC, so I put it on loop for basically a whole day and it really delivered
Like I said in my little write up: it would have felt like a very different album with these three subbed in for a few of the studio only tracks.
scrambledgreggs wrote:
I don't get the sense that people hate on CHz around here, I think most agree it is a solid album, but for me and I think many others it was the first in a long run of AC albums that didn't inspire that "OMG THIS IS THE BEST THING THEY'VE EVER DONE" feeling so I think it's only natural for people who had been following the band for awhile to feel a little bit let down.
This is pretty much it. I still love it. But it was the first new album in 9 years that I didn't think topped what came before it in some way.
Stan wrote:
CHz - I loved the build up to this with the weekly broadcasts and Centipede Radio mixes. The record itself wasn't anticipated here with anything like the excitement and joy of MPP because we knew the songs weren't as good, but we got in the spirit. I was in Rome with my wife for our first holiday when we'd just started courting and I paid about seventy quid for roaming data to stream the Centipede Radio album playthrough while sitting in the bathroom in the middle of the night so I didn't wake her up.
Ha! Love this! What a way to do your first listen!
Stan wrote:
Coming off MPP and his post-PP purple patch, Noah's songs here speak for themselves - a Tomboy offcut (albeit one I really like) and Rosie Oh, a song he himself thought was 'shit'. It's not the quality or quantity of his contributions to this record which are notable to me, it's his own perception of his involvement. Having driven MPP with arguably the best songs of his career, these were - to him - a couple of also-rans. Why did he feel so little investment? Tomboy was obviously an incredibly draining record, both in terms of the emotional investment of writing, performing and recording, plus the physical toll of touring, and the weight of expectations after PP and MPP. I completely understand and sympathise that he had little left in the tank and I wouldn't want him to be any more burned out than he was. Nevertheless, it's hard to argue that his presence, profile and songwriting are missed on CHz.
Not sure about all of this. I always had the impression that it was more about him seeking something that felt fresh/different. After a pretty intense song writing period I'm pretty sure I remember him basically saying that he just wanted to play drums for a while. I get that.
Stan wrote:
So it's Dave's record, then. That's nothing especially new. Some of their greatest albums are 'Dave's records', to use that phrasing. As band leader, did he make the record he wanted to, in that case? We've talked plenty in the past about the desert rock/alien radio concepts and whether the songwriting and tracklisting satisfied this brief, I won't dredge that up. I'll just say that it's always struck me as significant that Dave had another crack at it with Slasher Flicks before he was ready to move on. There's a killer 90s altrock album somewhere within the CHz and SF eras, but there isn't necessarily a great Animal Collective record in there.
It's a fascinating time to look back on now that they've come out of the other side.
I think Slasher Flicks has its own distinct character. I have no idea how staisfied he was with how those albums turned out but there is definitely a lot to enjoy for me as a listener. Someone later on mentions the 'spiritual' element and I do see that as potnetially being the missing ingredient during this period. There is a certain mystical/magical element to his best work that he really seems to capture on CHz or Slasher Flicks. Still a bunch of ripper songs in here though!
Slippi's Applesauce wrote:
Going into Centipede Hz after Tomboy and Down There, I'm having a great time seeing what each member is bringing to the table. While I personally love the record, I still have some major issues with it. Of course, everyone doing their own backing vocals is slightly upsetting. I'm not sure if it was because of changing lyrics or ease, but the only songs that I can really for sure hear Avey and Panda together on are the verses of Moonjock and bridge of Today's Supernatural (+maybe Amanita?).
I've always just taken this as them trying new things every album. Like, what will it come out like if we try it this way this time around?
Slippi's Applesauce wrote:
I like the alien radio concept/production, mixing, and sound choices, but the whole record sounds so muddy. Super frustrating, hopefully we'll get a remaster that clears it up one day. Feeling incredibly grateful that Time Skiffs sounds so good.
People often use the word 'cluttered' and I agree that its a good fit. I think everything can be made out but there is so much going on and often all the action seems like its happening independently. Like there is a certain synchronicity that's not quite there. Which might be completely intentional, that's just how I hear it.
dio wrote:
you never get the sense your hearing humans play instruments, or at least I dont
So maybe it IS intentional! Maybe its all part of the alien concept. Deliberately making it sound less 'human' than their ultra-human (tribal, primal, whatever your preferred adjective is) past.
Angelic Chaos wrote:
The album to me always felt intentionally schizophonic, like it's partially about all the ways we hear music around us in our daily life, so it isn't supposed to sound like a crystal clear hallucination like MPP or stark and controlled like SJ. I'm probably totally biased because I have ADHD, but the sound of CHz has always felt very relatable and exciting to me.
I like this take. CHz as a deliberately schizophonic expression of the chaotic musical saturation of engaging in modern society. Hearing snippets of different songs bleeding into a cacophonous mass
every time you walk through a shopping mall or something. And imagining how visitors (extra-terrestrials) might perceive that as how we actually experience 'music'.
dio wrote:
I DO agree with what peoples issue might be with the songwriting/vibes is it does feel a lil less "spiritual" than earlier stuff...
SJ had less fo that really soulful, ambient leaning meditative shit, but it was "soulful" in a different way via the moodiness of FWX or the drama of Cuckoo.
MPP seems sonically spiritual honestly, tho the vibes stay kinda light.
But then CHZ really was about rocking out... and the 2 most emotional songs arguably, Gotham and Crimson don't show up at all.
Yeh, here it is. Agree wholeheartedly. I think NTB is probably the only track that really gets me in that classic spiritual/emotional AC way. Maybe Wide Eyed too. Thought that also hit different because it was a Deakin track and his sound wasn't really a part of the AC universe at that time.
dio wrote:
I Think I Can, garbage-y sore thumb on FBK that's only fun the first 2-3 times (excuse the stan-esque hyperbole, I just liked the solo live version so much more) is literally about not knowing how to move on and not wanting to stay with the same vibes
Hard disgree! One of his best and most inspired sounding tracks ever for me.
dio wrote:
I feel like CHZ era (and maybe tomboy too?) was about him making sure his legacy wasn't ENTIRELY about this kind of white-tropicalia vibe that he does to an incredible level on like Chores, half of PP and Brother Sport.
-And so he was doing a lot of moody shit while trying to steer away from the usual Lion King-ish, "tropicalia" or Beach Boys-y reference points and thus..... some of TB and New Town Burnout and sort of Rosie Oh all give us different flavors beyond his Chores-y/Bro Sport-y party vibe
Mostly agree here though. I also think him getting back on the kit ties in with this. Possibly trying to show that he has multiple sides or whatever.
dio wrote:
I dont think we ever talk about this and it almost sounds toxic... but sometimes I wonder if its been a little tricky for Dave to balance this whole thing where he's kind of the OG ringleader, head songwriter while also kind of more and more sharing that duty with Noah and recently Josh.
Idk... that gets too personal... but I could see around SJ era he was like oh shit we gotta get Noah writing more, and omg PP is incredible, and then before you know it MPP is literally 50/50 and has panda-lead singles.
obviously its largely been a huge success to have a band with multiple full realized writers and singers. That's gotta be the dream for most bands... but getting from a front-man model to that mode might b tricky
eh idk thats a tangent but ummmmmm
No, I don't think that's really the AC way. I can't imagine Dave really worrying about it. They've always been about friendship and collaboration and freedom of participation etc. Also, Noah had tracks from the start really (Bad Crumbs for example). He and Noah totally shared the duties on Sung Tongs too. So as early as 2004 (only two years after their first proper album) things were shared around a lot.
captainlunatic wrote:
merriweather felt like the crest of a beautiful wave. my life was looking up like at no other time then. i had a girlfriend who loved ac. i was working a great job with a lot of cool people. things had basically reached the peak, or so i thought. over the course of the next three years, though, my mental health started to drastically decline, and i began to push away the important ones. i felt unfixable. i couldn't stop hurting people with my words. and right along with that was the sense that ac had hit a wall. my favorite band had stopped releasing music at a breakneck pace. where were they? how was i supposed to get through these tough times without that feeling that i was on the up-and-up along with them? i stopped listening to even their old music because it didn't hit the same way anymore, and clearly that meant i was just over them instead of the obvious, that i just needed to chill out. but my brain wasn't capable of doing that, so it put all of those problems on the people who meant the most to me. honeycomb/gotham and centipede hz seemed to confirm all of my suspicions with a big old ugly exclamation point: animal collective was over. my ability to love was over. the dark times had come, and they weren't going to go away for a long time. that, ultimately, is what the album represents to me: everything coming crashing down in an unholy mess, and finding a way to pick up the pieces and rebuild despite all of the obstacles that lay ahead. since then, centipede hz has grown on me quite a bit in terms of both the production and songwriting; they clearly were doing something different, even though it wasn't quite as obviously different as what i was used to at the time. and painting with was a huge breath of fresh air for me when it dropped, so i knew fairly quickly that my suspicions about the band being over were unwarranted. but it's hard to shake that feeling of something being wrong when i listen to centipede hz today, and for that reason i just don't put it on much. why make myself sad
I was really moved by this captain. I think I too have pinned my journey through life to this band in a lot of ways so reading that really connected. I hoped you're able to find ways to be kind to yourself and maybe rediscover this album in a fresh context. Divorce it from your past and find it anew.
captainlunatic wrote:
for tomboy, i will say that that album never truly clicked for me until i listened to it on acid just the other month. i really think noah made it specifically for that kind of experience, in terms of the sounds he used on it. i don't know about anyone else, but i always get very oceany, wavey vibes in my head on lsd, like i'm being transported to some watery, beachy source where it all began. i felt that the first time i did it with no music, and when i put on tomboy the next time it was like, holy shit. this is the soundtrack i've been looking for. amazing album that i thought was a disappointment when it was released (though not as much as i thought centipede hz was... maybe i should listen to that one on drugs too?) all of sonic boom's contributions have aged very, very well, from the weird synth line on the title track to just the little ways he beefed up the production on the singles. and benfica is just a beautiful closer. i totally get why panda thinks it's his best, though person pitch still edges it out
Most of my early listens to Tomboy were stoned and it was just such great music for that headspace. The cavernous, dubby, beach at night kinda vibe was perfect for being lightly stoned, at home alone with my cat. I was studying and my wife was working full time so I'd spend a lot of time at home blasting Tomboy.
I think the harsher production works really well on Tomboy. I always imagine the album taking place in a big ocean cave. Salt water and darkness and that huge sense of space (part comforting part intimidating).
I love the way the harsh beats sit behind the 50s/60s inspired numbers like on Last Night at the Jetty and Surfer's Hymn. The massive hip hop beat on Slow Motion is amazing and begging to be sampled. I bloody love that song. Benfica is the greatest song about a soccer I have ever heard. It actually sounds like some kind of parallel universe football crowd chant.
)
. I'm curious about what you're saying about noah's own perception of the era, can you point to any interviews where he talks about that?
