Collected Animals

Ah, great question! I like hearing these sorts of anecdotes.
For me, I have to blame mtv2 of all places. One afternoon after school (I think I was a HS sophomore at the time) I turned on the tv and saw the video for WCWAR and thought "I need this band in my life." Less than a month later, feels came out and I remember buying it, listening to it, and being very confused. Until Purple Bottle came on, then I "got" what they were doing.
It was all downhill from there.

Up hill man, UP HILL

Sung Tongs came out when I was in High School.. I recently got a iPod and just downloaded a bunch of records that we're acclaimed by Spin magazine. I was a newb, but have enjoyed every AC release since then.

Radiohead - OK Computer / Kid A / The Bends (10/10/10)
I like these records but they are not 10's to me

oh trust me... they are (to you!)

okay maybe not the bends so much (was more of a thing of that time... you KINDA Had to "be there")

or be square!

Yanky / Janky Motel Foxy Trot is def. NOT a 10/10!

it might not even be an 8/10?

Summerteeth is so mulch better!

hell even Ghost is Bjorn has more of the megular songs / experimentations!

though Chevy Metal Drummer is def. one of their best songs and easily the best song on YHF!

yhf is a 10/10. summerteeth is good but has like 1000,0000 songs and i listen to a.m. way more than most of the other records.

i don't have radiohead opinions sorry

The Bends used to seem like a 10 in the 90s but it's not as god-tier to me now. I think YHF and Summerteeth are both pretty much perfect in their own way. And probably same for Kid A and OK Computer.

Similar story to a lot of people for me. Heard of them with the Sung Tongs hype and year in review lists so got into that, then got obsessed when feels came out and starting getting into their older stuff and bootlegs from then.

it's like for Wilco...

AM is their PABLO
BEING THERE their BENDS (nothing! nothing!)
SUMMER TEETH their OK COMPUTER!

YANKEE their KID A!
GHOST their AMNESIAC!

SKY BLUE SKY their HTTT! (not really? what the HELL man)

then it sorta falls apart...

I guess you could say WILCO (THE ALBUM!) is more like HTTT

since Hail is like Radiohead (THE ALBUM!)

The Song!

and that would make WHOLE LOVE = IN RAINBOWS

don't call shit a come back!

and then there's TKOL and STAR WARS

(haha?)

also:

KID A / AMNESIAC

=

SPIRIT / DANSE!

but also

OCARINA / MAJORA'S MUSK!


kid a / spirit / ocarina are the "classics"

where

amnesiac / danse / mask are the weirdo guys ... the same but different

don't call them the leftovers!

change / weird is good!

I love it!

^woah mind-blowing but now that i think of it obvious comparisons there.

I was in my french class my freshman year of high school, it was a monday so we spent an hour conjugating verbs in the computer lab. I thought "fuck that" and started looking through "top 100 songs of the decade (since it was around new year's 2010) and one of the lists had fireworks as the #2 or #1 song of the decade, so i was curious and listened to it and didn't really vibe with it too much. Few weeks later, I was playing skate 3 and noticed that anco was on the soundtrack and i never heard the song play in game, so i played it and loved it, listened to fireworks again and loved it, boom bam bop here i am

also distinctly remember staying up until like 4am listening to that CHz stream the night before my first day of junior year, i recorded it on my laptop and listened to that for weeks until it officially dropped.

I forgot to say that I actually listened to Panda Bear's Person Pitch as the first animal collective related thing and thought it was amazing and then I went and pursued Animal Collective because I saw that Panda Bear was in AnCo.

That's just an amendment to my previous post.

bumping this bc i loved reading everyone's stories i want more

First I heard them was on the salad fingers website. I checked out samples from there but wasn’t hooked until I downloaded Feels and was blown away. Rest is history

Mine isn’t super interesting I was just a dorky 14 year old, freshman year of high school it was like late 2008 (mpp didn’t exist yet I know that). I hate that this is part of it but I had just started smoking and was into anything I deemed “weird” or ~trippy~ (lol I know but I was 14). Like, was really into MGMT. The name Animal Collective kept popping up around the internet when I’d look for new music that fit that criteria to me. I was using lime wire to download music (another lol) and just downloaded all the random songs that showed up when I searched. I remember Winter Wonderland, Grass, Peacebone, The Purple Bottle, Fireworks. And that was it. Also maybe a month later an upperclassmen I had a crush on uploaded a homemade video to Leaf House into Facebook. Then MPP came out and I remember listening to it every morning on the bus ride to school. Then, obsession.