Collected Animals

I discover them with the Movie dead girl about 3 years ago.

There was a song that I loved in the movie, looked a the credit and download Strawberry jam cause I thought that Reverend Green was the track

In fact it wasn't, it was a Liars song not AC. But when I put for reverend green, it was like weird revelation. I loved it but found it so strange. Then I kept listening to the album and loved it. A Year later they were playing in a city not far away from my home. So I started listening to MPP, loved it.

I discovered Feels and Fall be kind few days before the show. Fell truly in love with the band at that moment ,when I first heard the "swiming poooooooooooooooool" part on Banshee Beat, and that flow on Purple bottle ( Last track of the show, I went insane ( Peacebone/today supernat/ Brosther Sport/ Purple Bottle, it was epic).

And then it took me a year to listen to everything (exept few things, I want to keep some stuff for the rainy days) . since Animal Collective has been my favorite band

Cheers

^ . ^

Spring - Summer 2007, PP and SJ were initially rated very highly on RYM, they might have been #1 for 2007 at one point, don't remember too well. That was my first exposure to the band. And what a mind blowing experience it was.

Their live shows from that year is what made me an obsessive. Particularly that NPR boot.

it was 2005 and i am pretty sure it was around november because feels had just released about a month earlier. i was 16 at the time and just moved to a new school in a new town about 6 hours from where i grew up. one of my new friends i had just made came up to me and told me i needed to check out this song. they gave me a pair of headphones. the song was grass. and i'd never heard anything like it. i heard sung tongs about a month after that, and they've been one of my top favorite bands since that first exposure.

i think i was actually introduced to them via pitchfork lol.
i remember wcwar being the first song i heard and i'm pretty certain it was either right when sung tongs came out or maybe right before whenever they posted the song as "It Is OK" or whatever the equivalent of that was back in 2004. i didn't get anything else of theirs until feels dropped, at which point i went back and bought all of their back catalog and have been megafanACstyle since. didn't actually see them live, though, til the month SJ came out when they'd already started playing the MPP jams

I cannot remember exactly but i remember being really turned off by them at first with my lady friends recommendation. 'I thought it sounded too poppy' haha. Then I'm pretty sure i heard my girls in a skate video i bought didn't really think anything of it. Got really into the beatles and their experiments with lsd which led me to psychedelic music of all varieties. Wikipedia obsessed and compulsive i looked up their bio and started to dig into their early catalog starting with spirit. LOVED it and could not stop listening for the whole summer of 2009/10 maybe...Bought MPP first and it all went downhill from there.Ive been a fanatic for years now and couldn't be happier about it.

I used to hate them but one day I heard Winter Wonderland somewhere and fell in love, thing is I didn't know it was a song from them and I didn't looked it up right away either so I was shocked when I found out haha

According to my last.fm I listened to Winter Wonderland once, and then the rest of SJ about twice a week later in Feb 2008. I was a junior in highschool and probably checked out the album because one of my best friends was really into them. Peacebone jarred me a lot and I remember trying really hard to get through it because I wanted to be cool like my friend or whatever. I didn't listen to them again after that until about 1 1/2 years ago when I met some good dudes during college who were all big fans. I enjoyed whatever they played when we went driving around (mostly CHz and MPP)

The first time I really connected to their music was when my current partner linked me to a live performance of Taste. At the time I was in the process of ending a toxic relationship so both of us were extremely emotional, and I remember crying while watching the video. Til now I still sort of hesitate before letting the song come on, but now that I'm in a better head space I can enjoy their music much more. I'm still slowly digesting their older stuff, and watching any notable live performances when I can so. ye. hiii

Around the middle of 2005, Feels was the first record of theirs I bought, I'd heard quite a lot of their stuff which I wasn't sure about any of it but I bought it anyway and became totally obsessed eventually. I'm really glad I was a fan through the Person Pitch, Strawberry Jam, Water Curses, MPP era, all of my favourite AC releases. The scene around them with GGD and BD was so inspiring to me and still is I guess.

It was my freshman year of college when I first heard them. Someone I recently became friends with showed me Peacebone (after some meditation ) and when the intro came on I was like wtf is going on. Once the drums and bass started to crescendo and the sample from the intro fit into the rhythm in the background, I was hooked. This friend then showed me the rest of Strawberry Jam, Feels, Sung Tongs, Campfire Songs, and all respective EPs. I've followed all their subsequent releases, but didn't like their really early music until recently.

I've tried countless times to get friends into Animal Collective, but most of them hate everything I show them (apart from My Girls of course). To each their own, but something about AC just resonates with my soul

i downloaded HCTI and listened to a little bit of native belle in the car. i can't remember why but it wasn't grooving with me. then i heard "bat you'll fly" on a wire magazine compilation and really liked it. so then i got sung tongs and it blew me away.

I heard panda on daft punks ram and really enjoyed it but when i looked into his other stuff (like tomboy) it was so different and it put me off so i didn't really go back to it. then that winter i somehow found a CD that had mpp burned onto it. I hadn't had much to listen to recently, so i threw it on. it was the perfect album for the snowy weather outside. the breaking point of in the flowers was so cool and unlike anything i had heard. from there, i worked into CHz which was weird but not really that hard to get into compared to other stuff. then i went back to fireworks, but still didn't get into strawberry jam for a while. eventually i got through all of it and then once i had those three albums as a benchmark i really started exploring their solo and earlier stuff.

I was going thru music on YouTube and found a video of the whole MPP album in about 2012 and jammed to that a bit and dabbled a little into other AC. Bought it on iTunes in early 2013 and it was the only music I had on my phone (used my iPod back then) when I went to Europe in the summer of that year. I listened to it nonstop while traveling and when I got home I really started digging. Then I when I first started talking to my current BF, he told me he liked AC so I went crazy and started listening to EVERYTHING so I could talk about them with him. He told me about CA and I joined in late 2014 and then found about all the unreleased shit and random side projects. Now I'm a die hard fangirl.

I bought MPP in mid 2009 from iTunes based off of good reviews

Listened to it and I thought it was..... not good. The songs didn't sound like songs to me. I was confused why anyone would like it.

So I kept coming back to it... over and over... and then it just clicked and I couldn't get enough of 'em!

back in late 2007, my best friends and I were in a crappy punk band, I was straight edge and all I listened to was punk. I had started getting into some weirder punk bands like minutemen, saccharine trust, and die kreuzen. All my friends had started smoking weed and they finally convinced me to try it. My first few tokes later, "I dunno guys I don't feel it" then "shhhhhhhh here" *puts headphones on head* cue purple bottle--the rest is history....

ahhh back when weed was still a drug....


*edit* oh my glob doggy on lil' pierre!

I'm 18, and was in sixth grade when MPP came out. I got an iTunes gift card for my birthday, saw MPP listed as new music, and bought it because I liked the album art.

Yep

damn dude, that's some luck

lol, i know. blew my little mind back then... funny thing is, I didn't look past MPP until maybe 3 years later. Then i discovered sung tongs, and then actually got into AC. but little sixth grade me was running around listening to led zeppelin, passion pit and MPP

It was 07, I was 19 living in Brooklyn. I was in a dark place, and i wound up in the hospital. While i was in there, my dad brought me a book by the Dalai Lama. It was the first time i really read something that seemed to be calling me to wake up. I heard Comfy in Nautica when I got out, and it just synced up. Person Pitch was music that was unique, homemade and also it was like therapeutic for me. I really hope to one day thank Panda for making that album. I've heard that music is a ladder for the soul, that record was one thing that really lifted me up.

I feel the same way man. thats awesome.

I cant remember exactly when I got into AC. 5-7 yrs ago? Idk. Sometime during the summer. Anyway, I think I was over at my buddy Garth's house and he was playing some of their music and I liked it, so he burnt me cds of like all their albums.

I remember one day I just holed up in my room, listening to all of them through my tv/xbox 360 with the visualizer on and the windows closed haha. Been beyond in love ever since.

didn't I post here?

anyway, someone mentioned animal collective on some forum, so I downloaded water curses from beemp3.com (don't even kidding) and listened to it on repeat for 30 minutes while I downloaded summerthime clothes from the same site (had a really slow internet connection at the moment)

not a very exiting story but it was love at the first listening. water curses is still one of my favorite songs by them

Back in 2006 when I was in 5th grade, I borrowed my older brothers ipod and heard Leaf House and WCWAR?... then the rest of sung tongs.

I remember putting them down as my fave musician in the "yearbook" lol (if you can call it a yearbook in 5th grade). And when i heard Feels, SJ, and MPP my obsession only grew strongerrrrrrrr

So lucky my bro has good taste in music... Bros

Anyways, something about that first listen... hearing "kitties" and "we mean to unload" and the opening to leaf house, and all the texture, it all felt very tangible and child-like to me (not that i ever would have described it like that when i was 10 [holy shit i was 10])

Feels so long ago now.... I got the SungTongs cover as a tattoo last year to pay homage.

thx anco lov u

December 2007

I was reading year end lists published by indie sites during a time I was just getting over classic rock and old-timer folk/country, and wanting something fresh and vital. Weird to think about that time now, as I'm so entrenched in indie worlds.

Anyway, I saw a review of Strawberry Jam and for some reason I thought it was going to be a folk-pop album with field recordings or something like that. I can't exactly remember what I thought it was going to be, but definitely something with a lot of acoustic guitars. I think I had read something about Sung Tongs around that time too, so I assumed if Sung Tongs had lots of acoustic guitars, so would Strawberry Jam. Boy, was I in for a surprise! When "Peacebone" started... "What the Fuuuuuuuu??????" *Mind Explodes!*

Strawberry Jam is my favorite album of all-time, and has been for the past six years. I still jokingly refer to it as "my favourite folk album of all time" as well.

After digesting Strawberry Jam for awhile, I listened to the just-released (at the time) Water Curses, and then went back to listen to the whole discography. Feels and Sung Tongs were enigmas, magic to my ears for many years. I was mostly indifferent to everything else they had done for awhile. Over the years I've come to appreciate every era of AC, but I'd still consider their golden years to be 2005-2009.

Interestingly enough, I think the aesthetic of Painting With is going to be a perfect fusion with my tastes and what I look to hear in a song. I'm thinking this album has the greatest chance to supplant Strawberry Jam from #1 in my heart than any other record. Time will tell.

centipede hz. fell in love instantly.

I was a big fan of Múm back in the day. I was vaguely familiar with AC b/c they were on the same label, FatCat. Spring 2006 I decided to check out Sung Tongs. This was a weird time b/c my computer hard drive had just crashed along with all of my music, so while yeah music piracy was a thing back then too, I was on a college campus and if you downloaded too much shit, they would throttle your internet connection. So I had like two records to listen to for the last 2 months of spring semester. I thought Leaf House was straight fire, and the rest of the album was good, but for some reason I stopped there. I was exploring all sorts of music and somehow my path led me away from AC for a bit. Stupid right?

Well I never forgot about them, I had a big crush on Kristin Anna from Múm so thought this Avey guy's gotta be pretty legit. Eventually I heard a recording of them playing live at the 9:30 club that got played on NPR in like spring or summer of 2007 (I think?), mostly stuff that went on MPP or was on SJ. After listening to the shit out of that, I went out and bought SJ and downloaded Feels.

At the time I was listening to those, I was going through some relationship stuff, with one ending and another beginning a little bit later. Eventually MPP came out and was effing incredible. In short, those three albums (Feels, SJ, MPP) always bring up those feelings from around that time of love ending and new love beginning so the emotional connection is pretty strong.

Sorry for the long story and thanks if you read this

those three albums (Feels, SJ, MPP) always bring up those feelings from around that time of love ending and new love beginning so the emotional connection is pretty strong.

love this, so melancholy

must have been tough for you though. thanks for sharing!

I'm happy to help revive this thread a bit.

The coolest teacher I had in high school, Mr. Hill, played Who Could Win A Rabbit for our English class and everyone was like "wtf?" but I, in the shadows, beneath one of the movie posters on the classroom wall, was secretly scribbling down that band so I could check 'em out later.

Went home that night and heard Purple Bottle and Grass and I was hooked. I listened to them all winter and spring until SJ came out and my mind was blown yet again.

I've been an annoying fan ever since.

what the... my dad who was an English teacher (not Mr. Hank Hill!) ALSO played his students who could win a rabbit



what the hell is THIS! some sorta weird English teacher AConspiracy?



though in mein father's case it might have been... 2004/5ish?

so imagine the kiddies / kitties who like 2-3 or 4-5 years or so later maybe got into AC and thought "wait a minute... didn't my teacher play a song by these guys back in 2004 when I was in the 7th / 9th grade? WTF!"

also on Christmas showing my Grandparents the Rabbit video around the same time...

they ... didn't understand... like literally!

they didn't have a thing to say about it!

it was just not even reality to them!

my 8th grade Algebra teacher was named Mr. Hill!

he was quite odd!


so there must be something TO all this!

Sometime in 2010 I went and bought My Girls on iTunes after hearing about MPP... thought it was really weird and not at all what I was into at the time (and for some reason I thought the band was really pretentious... boy was I wrong about that) so I put it down and would occasionally listen to it for the next few years

Move the clock ahead to the start of 2014, was really fixed on My Girls for a little bit, went ahead and listened to the whole album for the first time. It pretty much hit me at the perfect time, because it was all I listened to for a couple of months (with dabs of SJ thrown in there too, but that sorta weirded me out at the time)

Come mid-last year, I decide to dive into the whole discog and I'm still going down the rabbit hole... just an amazing collection of albums/EPs/songs that was under my nose the entire time!

love this, so melancholy

must have been tough for you though. thanks for sharing!

Thanks dude/dudette. It's definitely bittersweet. Every time I hear Banshee Beat, I remember actually going around town sneaking into swimming pools at night with the girl I was seeing at the time.

10/10 would recommend though

I'm happy to help revive this thread a bit.

The coolest teacher I had in high school, Mr. Hill, played Who Could Win A Rabbit for our English class and everyone was like "wtf?" but I, in the shadows, beneath one of the movie posters on the classroom wall, was secretly scribbling down that band so I could check 'em out later.

Went home that night and heard Purple Bottle and Grass and I was hooked. I listened to them all winter and spring until SJ came out and my mind was blown yet again.

I've been an annoying fan ever since.

I like this one. sounds like a cool teacher indeed. someone that I should have needed when I was younger (is that grammatically incorrect? god, my english sucks most of the time)

Started listening to The Beach Boys when I was 7 and fell in love (I'm now 41). Music to grow and recalibrate to.

With the advent of the Internet I heard mention of AC in the same breath as the BBs a few times but dismissed any kinship as an impossibility.

Then I dug Panda Bear's vocals on Daft Punk's RAM and so checked him out: PBVSGR first; Person Pitch second.

Big revelation and a big soundscape and so I thought I'd check out AC: MPP and Strawberry Jam.

It felt like The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd had birthed a child in my ear.

And now: convert.

I'm not ashamed to say that I discovered Animal Collective through Pitchfork.

I think that Pitchfork is an amazing way to discover new music, I know that some people will think that I probably just like what pitchfork says is It Is OK but that's sort of a big jump.

Yes, when Pitchfork gives something a It Is OK I am more likely to check it out, but if I listen to something I like and pitchfork gives it a low score that doesn't mean I will stop liking it.

Examples of albums that I like that Pitchfork gave low scores -

Discovery - LP (6.8)
Melody's Echo Chamber - Melody's Echo Chamber (7.4)
Animal Collective - Water Curses (7.3)
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular / Congratulations (6.8/6.8)
Orcas - Yearling (7.0)
Phoenix - Bankrupt (7.5)
The Ruby Suns - Fight Softly (6.1)
Thom Yorke - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes (6.3)

And then there are examples of It Is OK that I don't like very much -

Grimes - Art Angels (8.5)
Deafheaven - Sunbather / New Bermuda (8.9/9/0)
Prurient - Frozen Niagara Falls (8.5)
Sun Kil Moon - Benji (9.2)
Nicholas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise (7.4) Only because he was mean to me in an email once
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (10)
The xx - The xx (8.7)
Radiohead - OK Computer / Kid A / The Bends (10/10/10) I like these records but they are not 10's to me

But anyway, like them or hate them, Pitchfork is usually a pretty good way to find some decent music. I found anco because there was this sort of legendary status around MPP and one fateful day at my local library I rented and burned a copy of it (it was hard to find because they had the wrong album art on it). I listened to it, it blew my mind. It was the only thing I listened to for a month and then I listened to everything in their discography for the next collection of months. So thanks Pitchfork, you're alright in my book.



Also btw, I love that new Porches record and no matter what Pitchfork gives it Imma still play that like crazy.

Or Joe Biden...



Go back to giving Panda Bear undeservingly low scores Joe Biden.

Pew pew pew. I posted that post at 12:53, Pitchfork reviews come out everynight (mon-fri) at 1:01. I honestly just tend to agree with pitchfork. Here is a confirmation of my suspicion.

I don't think anything 7 or above can be called a low score

I dig ya though

I accidentally downloaded campfire songs around 2004 and enjoyed it as some kind of novelty but didn't fully understand the beautiful and free sincerity of it. in 2009 a fellow I was making music with sent me derek and I was listening to it and all i could hear were horns, which is fucked cause there obviously no horns in that song. I thought it was weird and didn't really "get it" again. I respected the person that sent it to me a lot though so i listened to it over and over and it ended up sinking in pretty deeply and then i realized that to me animal collective were the best band that existed, hahaha. their albums then proceeded to completely redefine what music was and could be to me and ended up just completely taking the doors of acceptability in music off permanently. all is permissable, be free and your human self! is what they taught me, thanks ac boys

Pitchfork gives out a LOT of it's ok's that are undeserved but Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a damn near perfect record if I ever did saw one.

I pretty much decided to start listening o lots more music at the tail end of 09. MPP was all over the end of year lists and I remember being like 'Oh yeahh, I've heard of that band'. Listened to the intro of In The FLowers once and turned it off. Came home drunk one night and decided to give it anther shot. Listened to about Daily Routine before I fell asleep but loved it all. Even prompted me to put up my first and only FB status about the band. I remember thinking In The Flowers was insane, My Girls was good but repetitive.

The rest is history.