[jetski]

just popping into say I still haven't heard the album and plan to get absolutely blitzed tomorrow night for my first time listen. that is all. hope yall have been enjoying it so far

[awesome]

p4k review reads a lot more positive than an 8.0

[blindmowing]

yeah -- what i appreciate about p4k is that these days they seem to give most of the albums they review to the folks who really love the album and want to gush about it, then as a collective they give a score, so the review is often more positive than the score... this is very clear for reviews by Philip Sherburne who is one of their outsider music specialists who's super great at detailing and describing sounds -- his reviews always read likes 9s, but the music being more challenging also seems to make it harder to score well on p4k so his reviews get 7s...


Andy Cush did a phenomenal job on the review. was a terrific read -- the best review yet.

[memememe]

once again:

the people who write the reviews do not pick the rating

[Stories and Games]

the board's toxic relationship with reviews exists only in the "anything below a 4/5 review gets roundly dismissed as bad writing" sense (which does in fact suck a lot, there was a mixed early review of skiffs that got trashed here that was actually quite well done). but it is fine and normal to talk and speculate about music reviews lmao (it's even okay to care about them! you don't have to pretend you don't)

[blindmowing]

it's so beautiful

[jetski]

memememe wrote:

once again:

the people who write the reviews do not pick the rating

^yup

also ratings are stupid and meaningless. the words in the review contain 50000% more actual meaning. just ignore the rating. it truly does not matter especially not in 2023. turn off your computer and throw it in a dumpster

[memememe]

Stories and Games wrote:

the board's toxic relationship with reviews exists only in the "anything below a 4/5 review gets roundly dismissed as bad writing" sense (which does in fact suck a lot, there was a mixed early review of skiffs that got trashed here that was actually quite well done). but it is fine and normal to talk and speculate about music reviews lmao (it's even okay to care about them! you don't have to pretend you don't)

the diehards love to cope in the vain of "it reads like a higher score than it actually is!!!"

[speen]

Haha shit, this rules.

[rohcti]

blindmowing wrote:

it's so beautiful

Pretty sick

[DILWeed]

don't really care about p4k scores beyond their impact on if the general public gives something a shot, but this being rated lower than Skiffs is bizarre imo. like I get they already got the "return to form" hype out of the way with Skiffs, and IIN wasn't hyped much at all in music press so they weren't going to rate it above an 8 anyway, but it's still clearly better than Skiffs right? figured they'd at least hit it with an 7.4-8.6

[speen]

what an album!!

[Emerson]

im at the denver listening party this is saaaacccc ckkkkkkk?

[Emerson]

i love this babd!

[speen]

Kings Walk is amazing, cant understand the hate, gave me chills / reminds me so much of 2005 a cappella good lovin outside

[howsoever]

I don’t want to be that person but the lossless sounds so much better than the 320. Recording to tape left so much airiness to all these songs that a hard cap in lossy formats seem to take away. I feel like I’m listening to this outdoors in a nice field!

Happy release day everyone What a beautiful journey that’s led us here.

[blindmowing]

the opening moments of "Defeat" get me every time... epic, bone-chilling

[unrecordednight]

UM clubs is so sick wtf i love this, whoever said moondog 2 vibes was spot on

[famousprophets]

Honestly so thankful for this community and all of the wonderful insights and stories over the years. This era in particular feels like such a constant force in the background since the Music Box shows and to finally hear these songs officially out there in the world sounding this good feels especially cathartic.

Ready to spin this thing a few more times with a few more drinks to celebrate finally getting here

[unrecordednight]

amen!

[meys]

howsoever wrote:

I don’t want to be that person but the lossless sounds so much better than the 320. Recording to tape left so much airiness to all these songs that a hard cap in lossy formats seem to take away. I feel like I’m listening to this outdoors in a nice field!

Happy release day everyone What a beautiful journey that’s led us here.

YEP. Didn’t expect the details to pop like that especially to my ears but WOW

[roopn]

Cheers to that famousprophets! Enjoy, everyone. Keen to tuck into these flacs tonight

[tay's tee games]

Feels great to finally be here. Such a moment for them even if they're not making it seem so. Really looking forward to the listening event tonight - might even get to hear Defeat!

The p4k review was really well thought out and written imo. Obviously I'd be inclined to give it a higher score but it's definitely completely fair. Everything he says about their traditional songwriting compared to their early days when it felt like they couldn't write straight up normal songs is spot on.

Also thinking about IIN as the companion EP to Skiffs (a la FBK, WC, People etc.) is actually a really nice way of putting it - it's not untrue and it's being treated by the band as such. No tour, no massive hype cycle but still a nod to the fact that these are great songs which deserve to be put out. Similarly to those EP's, I think this is pound for pound a better release than the "main event" - I feel that way about Water Curses, Prospect Hummer and maybe FBK depending on the day.

[Fovrodi]

I am so glad this album is available to people, jeez

[Fovrodi]

Fovrodi wrote:

Living in the third act of an Adam Sandler movie rn

[foxtrot]

Currently very early morning in the US. Expecting lots of action here and hopefully lots of great reflections and thoughts in a few hours time.

Despite flogging the freebird it has been a glorious day for me. Have listened 3 times and just smiled a lot. Spring has sprung in Australia and AC season now too.

[muark]

Man today was a fucking good day in Victoria. 27 degrees Celsius and just got back from a pub sesh. Gonna blast these FLACS at full volume and smile the whole way through

[Leogan]

Wow, Andy Cush nailed that review for Pitchfork. Echoing others at this point but wanted to add to the pile – that was an insightful, focused, and thoughtful analysis peppered with historical bacon bits that paint a more complete picture of the band's history up to this moment than most other outlets are capable of doing. Score aside (assigned by someone else anyway) that feels like some of their best album coverage to date.

EDIT: Also holy SHIT the WAV/FLAC files add so much dimension it's like hearing these songs for the first time.

[BoomCheese]

Had a weird first listen as I was on a train in Germany as part of my first ever trip overseas. Voices over the intercom, a canc3lled train, an unexpected train changeover, and a slight stomach ache kind of tempered my first listen. Even if it had been a smooth first listen, I think my impressions would be similar. A bit underwhelmed overall, with the feeling that things will open up on successive listens. I didn’t listen to any boots, Defeat aside, and didn’t fully “get” Magicians or Genie’s (apart from its awesome Sea of Light outro), which wasn’t helped by the fact that they were extremely hyped. I had the same issue with Cherokee to some extent. Defeat has also been more “boring” than I hoped; it’s still a great song, just hasn’t aged as well as anticipated. However, Stride Rite was bloody beautiful and is probably my favourite track so far. I want more Deakin.
Like I said, I expect things to open up on my second listen, at which point I will make another post! My first listening environment was far from ideal. You only get to listen to a new AC album for the first time once, so I’m a bit annoyed at myself.

[muark]

Mother of god it's insane how much better the flacs are what the fuck. Always used to be that guy that thought it didn't matter but I fucking stand corrected this time

[jerry wonder]

I didn't like the p4k review! I find it boring that Cush referenced their old music at every turn, and didn't let this piece of music imo stand on its own.

This is a great album, a real gift, thank you AC

[tdegenaro]

go figure having flogged the freebird, drowned in the boots, the song hitting me the hardest today is defeat which we've had the studio version of the longest. happy release day to all, such a wonderful morning.

[PolarBear]

I don't want to write my review until I've heard it a couple more times. However first thoughts: 1. This album is so progressive I can see other bands try to copy its style, yet go over some regular Animal Collective fans heads at the same time. 2. The bum bums are perfect, idk wtf some of y'all are talking about. 3. Soul to Genies is some of the best opening tracks & transitioning since CHz (I wish more of the album had seemless transitions but it's all good). 4. Stride Rite is a masterpiece, i dont know how you can dislike the song at all. Deakin needs more than one song an album. 5. ACAB doesn't sound like a festival, it sounds more like a hypnotized nightmareish fever dream. 6. The last 2 songs are jarring, but I feel like thats an intentional response to the theme and things that were said earlier in the album.

[annalivia]

Pitchfork in 2005: Animal Collective are gods 9.0

Pitchfork in 2009: Animal Collective are gods 9.6

Pitchfork in 2023: Animal Collective are gods 8.0

Regardless of what's been said above about the review (which is well-written), rating Time Skiffs above this is objectively wrong.

[lhtd]

My current pet theory is that ACAB was developed in the studio. It's short and repetitive and has funk. Sounds like something the band would quickly write as a kind of homage to working with Russ, given his background.

[awesome]

geo interview going the most in depth yet on the record: https://last-donut-of-the-night.ghost.i ... interview/

some interesting bits

wrote:

It would've come out sooner, but if you talk to Domino...we just don't make it easy on them, or ourselves, when it comes to how much we're putting stuff out, whether it's solo stuff or Animal Collective records. We want to put our film scores out on vinyl, Dave reissued Spirit, Noah and Pete did their thing, and Dave had been sitting on 7s for two years as well. It would've come out sooner! But it was recorded and released as soon as possible. It wasn't solely just to clear it out, but we do have a lot going on. All of us are doing solo stuff that we're really into. Dave and I have New Psychoactives that we made a record for while soundtracking our friend's art installation, and we put it out on cassette and sold it on tour. We know that there's a limit to how much Domino can put out, but also to how much people can pay attention to us these days.

wrote:

In terms of the press we're doing for this record, it's not a normal press cycle. It's much more laid-back. [Laughs] There's way less interest. And it's not like they're saying they don't like the record—or, at least, they're being polite and not saying that. Even scheduling this with you was so funny. We literally had to be like, "When was the last time you talked to Larry? Four months ago? Six months ago? Eight months ago?" And I literally had to be like, "OK, I'm up, but I did speak to Larry for Time Skiffs." And Josh was like, "Well, I spoke with him for Time Skiffs, too." And Dave was like, "I spoke to him for 7s," and Noah was like, "I talked to him for Reset." (Editor's Note: Noah has actually been on the newsletter twice as well.) We were like, "Why does he want to talk to us? Isn't he sick of us at this point?"

wrote:

We're not touring this record. Touring takes a lot for Animal Collective when it comes to rehearsals and start-up costs, and that last tour was gonna lose a lot of money anyway. We're no longer popular enough in Europe that we can tour the same way we do in America, and we have to take some responsibility for that by scaling back a bit. But we were gonna ask the label for tour support while scaling back, and it was going to be break-even at best—and if someone gets sick, we lose a lot of money. And we lost a lot of money last year from the North American cancellation we did. You want to still pay your crew—they can't just go get another job. They're not getting publishing royalties. The bus company can't rent their bus out, so you still gotta pay for that too.

wrote:

We don't get the kind of advances we got in the past. We can't live off of making records, but it's been a while since we could—at least as a band, since we split things however many people play on a record, and we pay our manager and stuff like that. However, there was a time when we could. I still don't have a day job, and because the 2000s were successful enough...I'm not a millionaire, never been one, but it was good enough that, with my wife working and getting health insurance through her job, I have a couple of years before I would need to panic. Not everybody can say that. We were in the final era of a band getting royalty advances pre-streaming, that doesn't exist anymore.
...
Isn't It Now? is part of a new deal with Domino, but the deals are different than we've done in the past. The last one was for four records, this one is not. It's not like there's anything wrong with the relationship. Domino's great to us. I'm sure every label complains about their bands, and every band complains about the label, but I count myself lucky—just like being in the band. We've all been friends for so long, and sometimes we get in arguments on tour, and our crew or the support band in the van will be like, "I don't think you guys get how lucky you are. You're complaining about someone you work with and create with for 30 years. I don't have that in my life. Be grateful for that and shut up." Our manager says that about Domino, too. She says, "I deal with a lot of record labels, and I don't see them trusting other acts the way Domino trusts your instincts. The reason why the contracts are different is because nobody has any idea of where this industry is going.

wrote:

I started to realize a little later that we had such a blast making Painting With that that influenced things. The touring was so much fun, too. But we never played those songs live before we tracked them, so it was a case of what I used to worry about. We always played songs live before recording them, and I felt that helped the songwriting process. You learned that if you outgrew ideas after doing them every night, they weren't worth keeping.

With Painting With, we played those songs together privately for a while, but they became a different beast after the record came out. Maybe there were just different vantage points to look at those songs from. Maybe they didn't have to just be three minutes! When we played "On Delay" live, it was six minutes long, and maybe that was a better version. I kind of got why, for us, we had a goal and a blast working on that goal, so it felt like a huge success, but people weren't a part of that experience with us. They just got the results. For other records, they were part of the process with us as we were testing things out live and they were hearing how things developed. Maybe it didn't feel as abrupt to them. But yeah, "They just showed up and made a bunch of goofy, annoying noises." To me, I'm like, "That's what I've been doing in the band for 20 years!"

On that tour, we were like, "We haven't played 'Taste' in a long time," so we had to listen to it, and we realized that if you took the reverb off of it, it sounded just like it would've been on Painting With. That was the only difference I heard. But after I saw different sides of the songs live, I realized, "These things I did here I could've done better on the record." And I can't say that about other Animal Collective records, because things had gotten to a point where I felt pretty good about what I was playing. But I don't think that record sucks like everyone else seems to do. [Laughs]

[coral lord]

Love love love to see p4k’s glowing words on Stride, Gem, and Magicians. Easily the 3 highlights of the era for me. They represent such different heights the band is capable of, all opposite ends of the spectrum. A ballad, pop perfection, and a winding song that only Avey is capable of. So cool to see them hit exactly the way they did on the album as they did the first time we heard their bones half a decade ago.

[Tropic]

Super interview. Love Brian's insights into the band and music industry. Could listen to him talk all day

[tdegenaro]

geo i just want you to know dawg painting with does not suck

[lhtd]

lol there immediately goes my pet theory about ACAB