foxtrot wrote:
andthephantom wrote:
alvinrowx wrote:
After repeated listens, I think everything doesn't totally click with me.
Not a big fan of these "random arpeggios" in the background, in the first part. What I usually love about their songwriting is their unique way of blending sounds and dynamics into their rhythmic patterns and melodies, which creates something like a driving force, even when the song is slow. Usually, every sound seems to fall into place, exactly where it was intended. I can't feel all of that in the first minutes. It's like Avey's voice was just put over the arpeggios, and the arpeggios themselves sound like random playing around a few notes... Sounds like filler instrumentations, and the result is a bit static, imo. :/
It gets better and better though. My favorite part is the last one (from 17:25 to the end), in which I can fully recognize what I love about their music, at last : Avey, Panda and all the sounds responding to each other, to create something dynamic and cohesive, that flows in a beautiful way. I especially love Noah's delicate singing.
I also feel like the transitions between each part don't work as well as on other "patchwork songs" like on Fall Be Kind, in Alvin Row, Mr. Fingers, or even TTG.
I hope it will grow on me but I'll stop listening to it until the album comes out.
Great post - it doesn't reflect my own feeling about the song. But I'm grateful for the diversity of opinions, and I can totally get your response to the opening section vocals etc.
As for the transitions . . . they work for me on Defeat . . . they don't work for me so far on Magicians. That's the one I'm anxious to hear in the studio version - because I love the parts of that song but I'm not sold that they fit together like they should.
I hear the first part the same way I hear stuff like Daffy Duck - just kinda amorphous waves of ambient sound that create a dreamy effect. other parts are much more rhythmic or cohesive.
the transitions in these types of AC tracks are always less 'neat' and 'compositional' and more about just fluidly shifting the atmosphere. like they're often basically just fade ins of new parts - bros, safer, graze etc.
hi all, longtime lurker drawn out of hiding by this incredible song.
i agree with a lot of what alvinrowx said and wanna throw in my two cents, for what it's worth (about 2 cents, probably).
firstly, i wanna say i feel like they did it. i have quibbles, but this still feels like such a profound success, a real high point in their discog when ppl look back on it in 50 years. i really feel like i can rest easy, which hasn't always been true with their studio recordings.
like many here, i had such an intense and moving experience the first time i heard the music box village version, and i think it will always have a special place in my heart. and esp given taht we might get an official live recording, i feel very happy that i'll be able to have both versions. no need for their only to be one.
ok delving in:
personally, i feel like 22 mins is a bit too slow. i don't want quite as fast as mbv, but i'd be quite happy with this thing being like 18.
i like the idea of "Animal Collective return with a 22-min song!", which was how the press covered it. but i wonder if that was part of avey's motivation in a way; he wanted to have written a >20 minute song because the massiveness of that number j seemed fitting.
personally, i think it feels plenty massive at like 17-19... and this is all by way of saying i think the first part suffers the most from the slower pace from recent shows and the studio version. it feels a little plodding to me, whereas it felt more urgent in the mbv performance (this is also true but to a far lesser extent about the final DEFEAT!s imo).
i don't think the verses of the 3rd part suffer at all from the pace tho. in fact, i feel like the studio version with those panda harmonies is THE definitive version of the third part, which is a change for me because a part of me will always imagine the version of this album that would have come out in 2020 and only feature avey, deakin and, geologist. i love panda, both solo and band, don't get me wrong, but i feel like that's the kind of radical move that they aren't really willing to make anymore. sure you get man of oil or soundtrack stuff, but i don't think they can be as playful and experimental with members in the big releases (i'm in the "get out of this Domino contract, go back to Paw Tracks, and starting being freaky" camp)
back to the song... i mean, goddamn, the first time i heard the studio "onccccee wasss a goooodd wayy (oncee was a goodd way)" i nearly lost it, and then "And praise for the underdog / That was you with the goodd dooooooog" came and i DID lose it. just incredible. this song gives me a feeling i've never had before.
(incidentally the synth line--or piano--that plays tantalizingly behind the lyrics and does that very debussy-sounding descent around the first line of the pt 3 versus is insanely good as counterpoint and just as sound)
re: foxtrot, i think you are totally right in making comparisons to safer, graze, etc. there is so much precedent for what happens here in songs that are widely loved... AND YET. I guess what i'm saying is that a lot of my problems with the transition and the 2nd section totally feel like my fault for being attached to live stuff, and ppl hearing this for the first time would never guess all my ridiculous complaints.
but yeah, don't really like the transition that much. the drumming feels very graze in a re-tread kind of way (there are moments that feel very feels, to be fair, but to me it channels that era more than it j copies it). the singing in the transition is probably what i like least. to me it just feels very enya. and i mean, i like enya, but i never would have thought defeat of all songs needed some enya. also... avey's bass, that ascending, descending riff. i just canNOT get into avey's use of bass. i feel like the textures always sound sorta goofy and plunky and basic, and totally takes me out of the out-of-world vibes of the rest of the song. i sorta can vibe with it on Saturdays, and i get his whole thing about how new instruments can make you think in different ways, but to me it j doesn't work too well.
i'm p happy with the middle proper tho. it doesn't hit like it did live at MBV (i still wish they had j incorporated some of the instruments used by the collaborators at MBV, but oh well) or even elsewhere... but also, it. is. not. live. it's a recording! so i feel like it's ok if it doesn't quite have that live energy with freer vocalization from avey.
anyway, those are my minor gripes. it feels good to express them, sorry if they make no sense to you! i still goddamn love this song and am j so so grateful for it; been playing it non-stop, and it's a wild, multi-layered journey every time.
My opinion could change later, but I want to listen to it again in the context of the album, so I'll wait...
) that makes the song go forward, even if it has amorphous waves of ambient sound. It gives it an impression of movement or tension that makes me feel every sound/rhythm is deliberate.
