[jfw7]

ingenue wrote:

“Those early albums are perfect. Everything sucks after _________.”

hm, I’m not sure I can even imagine anyone doing that

[wilandhugs]

jfw7 wrote:

ingenue wrote:

“Those early albums are perfect. Everything sucks after _________.”

hm, I’m not sure I can even imagine anyone doing that

Me either, but mostly because I think the trajectories are too different. I could talk a long while about MM's shift and especially what it means with Brock's modern re-evaluation (very modern, like past 2 years IIRC).

AC has always been very self aware, I think in a way that very few artists are.

For what it's worth, people already kinda say this after MPP. I think it's not the same analogy though, cuz I think the 'division' from MPP after was purely a farce due to the fact that it was just their commercial/critical apex (so far), but not in any sort of legitimate, qualitative way. I think it's pretty agreed that there was a drop off after Good News for MM, and that fwiw the golden casket sort of feels like a return to form.

[scrambledgreggs]

I disagree, I loved We Were Dead and Strangers to Ourselves and don't see any serious dip in quality there

but also I think jfw7 was joking since so many people even on this forum have said AC dropped off after MPP

[ingenue]

There has to be some diehard AC head who absolutely hates Feels.

[wilandhugs]

scrambledgreggs wrote:

I disagree, I loved We Were Dead and Strangers to Ourselves and don't see any serious dip in quality there

but also I think jfw7 was joking since so many people even on this forum have said AC dropped off after MPP

sarcasm in text isn't my forte. I also don't think that they're bad, but I don't think they're as consistently good as what's before and now after. But I think the consensus among fans is a lot stronger there at least

[jusswerjk]

ingenue wrote:

There has to be some diehard AC head who absolutely hates Feels.

There is. I remember some guy posting awhile back that he didn't like Feels because it didn't sound like the early boots. He wanted it to sound like a "backwoods hillbilly jam band" or something lol.

[lhtd]

I mean I can hear it... backwoods hillbilly jam band if they got dressed up real nice to go to town for ice cream

[jusswerjk]

lhtd wrote:

I mean I can hear it... backwoods hillbilly jam band if they got dressed up real nice to go to town for ice cream

[dansemanatee]

lhtd wrote:

I mean I can hear it... backwoods hillbilly jam band if they got dressed up real nice to go to town for ice cream

makes sense that turn into something was called originally country fuck lol.

one of the things i like about feels is how goddamn lush it is and the 2004 boots are so cool because it still feels pretty lush but the live context brings a lot of the energy out more and as opposed to that really dense warm soupiness of the album you have this more stripped back off the walls-freak out music. definitely bridges the gap between ark and feels.

[captainlunatic]

ark do be slappin' tho

[madameghostly]

don't know if anyone's pointed this out before but i was listening to Young Americans by David Bowie the other day and noticed this line



either this is a coincidence or the boys have been doing an obscure bowie reference for the past five years and not telling anyone. either way, i just think it's neat

(disclaimer: this user has not yet listened to Defeat, and fully intends to remain a Defeat virgin until [s]marriage[/s] a studio version is released)

[roopn]

Here's a curiosity

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_the_raven

Via depths of wikipedia

[ingenue]

Bob Weir interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning. Kind of a lot of fluff, but there was a cool moment when he talked about Jerry Garcia visiting him in a dream. “He invited the song into the room,” he said, and it looked like a sheepdog.

Hope we’re watching interviews of Noah, Deak, Dave and Brian when they’re 75. Imagine the sounds of AC in 2052. Far out.

[rohcti]

That's cool. Could it be Noah's sheepdog?

It's said a lot, but it's weird to think about how quickly time passes by. When I first got into the band they were barely 30. And now they're creeping up on 50. Maybe it shouldn't, but it scares me to think about my favorite bands getting older and what that means

[Fovrodi]

I had a dream they did an acapella cover of White Christmas and you could only listen to it buy calling a number on a payphone

[captainlunatic]

he blacked my eye and he kicked my dog

that dog's name?

derek

[Cooper]

Feels being a backwoods country album is blowing my mind lol. So true. It just scream green flannel. The good kind of flannel too, looser fitting cotton- not that thick soft shit. Ew! But also not indie dude thrifted flannel either. Bought at like a guns and fishing outdoor outlet 30 years ago kind of flannel

[speen]

Yall ever going about your business and then youre like damn, animal collective is really good

[lhtd]

Cooper wrote:

Feels being a backwoods country album is blowing my mind lol. So true. It just scream green flannel. The good kind of flannel too, looser fitting cotton- not that thick soft shit. Ew! But also not indie dude thrifted flannel either. Bought at like a guns and fishing outdoor outlet 30 years ago kind of flannel

Alternative flannel Avey Feels cover. If only I could find that photo of him shooting a rifle from that same day/location...

[Tropic]

it's here

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-CQPHrMdls&t=763s&ab_channel=Preakness[/youtube]

[archie]

i like tht video because hes singing the right lyrics for passerby

[archie]

look at the burning sun how does it last so long

[whats that twitching]

broke zodiac sounding better every time since 2021

[whats that twitching]

has this one been posted? what a killler..

[andthephantom]

I love Broke Zodiac. But it still feels like a TS1 track to me. I’d put it as side A on a double single, if they’re looking to spread things out.

[lhtd]

I miss songs like #1 and Loch Raven.

Bring back the woman who vocalizes and the man who speaks backwards.

Please.

[scrambledgreggs]

lhtd wrote:

I miss songs like #1 and Loch Raven.

Bring back the woman who vocalizes and the man who speaks backwards.

Please.

this is why I'm excited about Kings Walk, it has the same loosey goosey feeling as those earlier songs

[Stan]

lhtd wrote:

I miss songs like #1 and Loch Raven.

Bring back the woman who vocalizes and the man who speaks backwards.

Please.

Yeah maybe peak AC there, don't even kind of know what the tune is for those songs but know them inside out, wonderfully elusive, sound like nobody else, you don't really get that kind of sweet weirdness any more. The abstract stuff is more wholly abstract/ambient and most of their songwriting is much more trad these days, very verse chorus kind of thing. Not saying that's shit but I do miss the likes of Visiting Friends, Daffy Duck and the like.

[lhtd]

Yes, they've been seemingly "locked in" to grooves and write songs within rhythm rather than playing with atemporality. It's "Animal Collective does songs." Gone is the Big Other in their music. The primal scream lullabies, the sweetness, the syrup only exist in sporadic moments. I think Time Skiffs sounds like a culmination of this effort with Noah's steady hi-hat acting as a sheep dog keeping the sounds in line.

Although this discussion has been more or less beaten to death, my intuition points to the fragmentation of their cohesiveness as a band post-MPP (not literally, but musically), which resulted in solo projects that in-turn reflected into the band's projects as a kind of group individualism. Everyone is doing (mastering?) their own perspective at the cost of listening and improvising to and with the others. I hear this most today in the Time Skiffs live jams wherein there's wall of sound melodies that feel less purposeful and more self-indulgent. It's like they're jamming but each person is in their own enclosed space. Makes me imagine the pandemic and social distancing, come to think of it.

I agree with Stan that this shift isn't necessarily wrong or distasteful. But it is different, and it seems reasonable to at least acknowledge the differences in their direction. I even think that the mythos of MPP –> CHz –> PW –> TS describes this alchemical putrefaction that produces Spirit within Man from Man ensconced in Spirit. That's interesting to me. However, it's still my hope (which isn't worth much) that Dave's intimations in recent interviews of exploring loose arrangements comes to fruition. Man may be an animal but as it stands Animal Collective is turning into Man Collective.

[Tropic]

Great post.

MPP definitely does feel like a culmination of the beast that was noughties AC. There wasn't another peak in popularity for them to ascend to by that point. Retrospectively you can sort of split the band up by those two decades, the latter of which is marked by an air of easiness, like they were happy to just explore their outer limits for a while both as a band and as solo artists.

You could honestly jumble up any of the tens releases and it wouldn't feel much different--there isn't a hardline trajectory like there was from, say, Danse >>> MPP. They have certainly broken new ground since (Painting With and Buoys stick out most to me) but they don't hold the zeitgeist captive like they once did. Music Box to me felt like a second coming of the old AC but that material has since splintered for various reasons.

Still is an interesting time to be a fan and long may it last. I do wonder what AC will look like going forward now they've been financially unable to tour a significant part of the world. Might see them slip into smaller more sporadic projects and a few more years of solo-only material.

[andthephantom]

It seems like they're saving their weirder, less structured material for separate projects and letting less of it bleed into the LPs. But they're still making it. Crestone, New Psycho Actives, The Inspection, Sux-Bier Passage, MOTW, Tangerine Reef - to my ears, these all have elements of what folks are talking about (though, admittedly, less of the raw scream-y stuff). I don't think any of these projects came about through the magic in-studio / on-stage / hanging-out alchemy that accounts for their earlier stuff.

I feel like Bridge to Quiet is the best recent balance of these instincts. And maybe not surprisingly, BTQ is the most slap-dash thing they've done in awhile.

[Tropic]

Sux-Bier is one of my favourite things they've done in the last ten years. BtQ is great

[wilandhugs]

andthephantom wrote:

It seems like they're saving their weirder, less structured material for separate projects and letting less of it bleed into the LPs. But they're still making it. Crestone, New Psycho Actives, The Inspection, Sux-Bier Passage, MOTW, Tangerine Reef - to my ears, these all have elements of what folks are talking about (though, admittedly, less of the raw scream-y stuff). I don't think any of these projects came about through the magic in-studio / on-stage / hanging-out alchemy that accounts for their earlier stuff.

I feel like Bridge to Quiet is the best recent balance of these instincts. And maybe not surprisingly, BTQ is the most slap-dash thing they've done in awhile.

Yeah, this is my feeling too. As much as a part of me will always love and appreciate their more experimental and looser work, I still primarily prefer their abilities to blend those capabilities with a very outside the box pop perspective. Ive always been drawn more to experimentation synthesized with pop, rather than one or the other one their own, and I think I speak for a lot of posters when I say that's what makes me absolutely adore stuff like Painting With or Grim Reaper.

So, I'm happy that they're keeping the experimental side of things alive, and of course they're never going to be intended as the 'primary' releases, and it's awesome that their other material is a progression and synthesis of their new ventures into the other when they attempt it. To me, it seems like they just don't attempt to make it as permanent a moment as their poppier stuff (i.e. music box, ATP demos [which Pete shared anyway iirc !!], mothlight ), but it's still there and they're still active with it.

[roopn]

great posts all round!

lhtd wrote:

[...] this alchemical putrefaction that produces Spirit within Man from Man ensconced in Spirit. That's interesting to me.

I'll be honest this lost me a bit, could you elaborate?

Tropic wrote:

Retrospectively you can sort of split the band up by those two decades, the latter of which is marked by an air of easiness, like they were happy to just explore their outer limits for a while both as a band and as solo artists.

For me what's exciting is that we're entering a third decade. The 2010s era, usually maligned as a comedown after their singular 00s run, may now become a "middle era". What's in store for the 20s remains to be seen.

[jfw7]

talking about the 00s as an era doesn’t make a ton of sense imo

[roopn]

think macro timescale, like when people talk about dinosaurs or tectonic plates

[jfw7]

i guess i agree with your primary thesis, which is that the band neither started nor ended (despite noah's attempts) in the 2010s, making that decade part of a so-called "middle"

e: jk jk. i agree with your OTHER main point which is that i'm glad the band is still around and trying new stuff, and also that they're a band who was doing entirely different stuff twenty years ago!!

[ingenue]

roopn wrote:

think macro timescale, like when people talk about dinosaurs or tectonic plates

lol

[ingenue]

Man, idk. I've been really critical of the band over the last few years, but I had a "come-to-Jesus" moment where it really struck me—people age, and their art changes. I am not the same 18-year-old whose mind was melted by Sung Tongs. And the dudes are not the same twenty-somethings who made that thing. Life intervenes. Death intervenes. Idk. It all happens in a moment. It's all a spoken word. All of the great religions get it—don't cling. It is folly to wish for something that what was. "And on earth peace, good will to men." May your art serve the cosmos and moment. That's all we have and all that matters.

[Stan]

Absolute nonsense. At some point they must revisit the specific creative spirit that I prefer and they will do it properly this time.