[Calvin]

Micah wrote:

read the Pitchfork review of Sung Tongs when it came out. sounded really cool so I bought it later that day solely because Pitchfork gave it a good review (I was 14 and HIGHLY influenced by P4K). I absolutely HATED it, I couldn't wrap my mind around it I guess. about a year later I took it out and put it on, giving it another go (which is something few people do now-a-days, including myself. if you don't invest any money into the album it's easy not to give it a second chance and just delete it. the downside to downloading IMO is you don't give albums the time they might require.) and once the second part of Winters Love came on it just clicked with me. I listened to it non-stop and bought every AC release from that point on. I still play the shit out of all of them cause they're all so damn good.

very similar to my experience, just take away buying it initially and replace sung tongs with strawberry jam

[gdfkghkfdg]

2007 was the best year ever to be an AC fan IMO. I was 16 at the time and was in love with Feels after hearing it in 2006. Then all of a sudden: Person Pitch comes out. Pullhair Rubeye comes out (which we all know is brilliant when played forwards). Signed to Domino. Strawberry Jam announcement. New tour playing MPP songs. Strawberry Jam is slowly freebirded 3 songs at a time. Sjams comes out. I saw them live twice that year as well. Seriously no other year can compare.

[Animalkriminalz]

For me it was when I saw them play in ATP the movie. The staring contest peacebone remains to be my favorite performance by them. I've been a fan ever since.

[jovian]

2006, beat up old honda van nicknamed 'the time machine', a bunch of weed, a copy of sung tongs is sitting on the floor

[Gazehound]

I think it was during my freshman year of high school...or maybe 8th grade...couldn't tell ya. was at dinner with a friend I'd known since elementary school and hadn't seen in awhile. I asked her what bands she'd been listening to lately, and the first one she said was animal collective. I'd heard that name before but had never listened to them, so I got home and dug in.
purple bottle and fall be kind were the first things I heard and I was completely blown away. this was during a dark and embarrassing time in which I thought owl city was about as good as music got. thankfully AC turned me away from that path forever

[lhtd]

Wilbur wrote:

onesweetone wrote:

MPP dropped January 2009 and it was the best first time album listening experience I've ever had.

Yeah, definitely my experience too. I felt chills on damn near every song, never had such a thing happen since.

I cried.

[Zero Cool]

interesting stories.

[sory]

Heard sung tongs right before my freshman year of high school. Then feels came out like a month or two after that, and my whole high school experience was basically listening to AC then being super disappointed once my friends starting liking MPP.

[terrestrialjane]

That was a refreshing read zero cool ! : )

[Automine]

I got into them around November of 2011. I was 12 or 13 then, and the first song I heard was My Girls that I heard from the radio. I was really into it and looked up the rest of MPP and strawberry jam and downloaded both of those. I was super in love with their stuff. Over the next few months I slowly introduced myself to their older stuff, and panda + aveys solo stuff. I really loved it all and it took me about a year to completely get into most of their music. I remember when I first watched that video on YouTube of them in masks singing winters love, and I thought it was the weirdest thing. I didn't watch it again until probably a year later and I realized I actually love it. After I saw them live for the first time in March 2013 I became fully obsessed!

[IkoOvo]

I have a really similar story as you Auto.
Maybe a similar timeline as well (I think I'm like a year older than you maybe).
Also, welcome to CA, and sweet fish sticks av!

[Automine]

Thanks IkoOvo!!! yeah I'm really glad I joined CA hahah there's a lot of cool stuff on here! so much stuff I didn't know too. Super useful:--))))

[Untitled]

here it is: i had benn listening massively to vampire weekend and tame impala becuz my big brothers friend had burned them on cds for him. i really liked them alot. but he also burned one more with a band that i didnt know. and that band was animal collective. but when i got the urge to listen to it we couldnt find it, resulting in me going to the library and getting all their ac cds(st, feels, sj, mpp and fbk) due to a synchronization error on itunes only the three first of strawberry jam found its way to my ipod. i decided to listen to it on my way to school and it was love from the very start(although i thought my earphones were broken at the start of peacebone :) becuz i had only listened to like 60's and blur/strokes/libertines and stuff like that which isnt that weird. 

[bansheebeaten]

when I was in like.. freshman or sophomore year of high school? (2006/2007) my friend found purple bottle on itunes or something. then another friend looked into more of their music and put Grass, For Reverend Green, Derek, Who Could Win A Rabbit, and Purple Bottle on a mix CD and I latched on to For Reverend Green and Derek in a big way.. hehe. I got into Fireworks too. those songs are kinda my nostalgia songs and really make me happy.

then I didn't do too much more exploring until later high school (MPP) and college (CHz) and became the fan I am today. ahah.

[dio]

towards the end of 08, I found out SJ got a lot of hype and remember being grossed out by the cover art and the opening of Peacebone, but interested by that, and I think Chores and #1 and Cuckoo were big draws initially..seeing vid of Cuckoo at Malta sealed the deal. And then MPP dropped and that was the prettiest most disorienting album id herd , almost nauseatingly so for me at first.

I remember it wasn't until finals week of that subsequent semester that I went ahead and downloaded all their discography one night, after only having mpp wc st feels and sj maybe...and I listened to everything and was so stoked that it all seemed pretty "perfect"... then I found the forum that summer and herd stuff like From a Beach and Grace and WWIWS and Fickle Cycle for the first time and was just like so stoked abt finding such a great band

[bansheebeaten]

I like how we can casually describe our favorite band as "nauseating at first"

(though I only really felt that way about certain music vids and I don't really watch vids anyway)

[P nu]

when I first heard MPP i was like "wtf is this. nooooo" - nauseating sums it up pretty well - Bluish is the only one that even sounded like a song to me

what a fool i was

[jerry wonder]

so awesome that there is such a wide age range of collected animals; that's what makes this forum so cool.

I was introduced to Sung Tongs by my best friend shortly after it came out in 04 when we were both in our second year in college. I LOVED it, and then, without my knowing, AC played a show at my college, Hampshire, at our annual Spring Jam festival. I went to the campus green and there were literally 25 people under the tent. The boys were in masks and the show was fuckin raw. They were touring with proto Feels material and I felt so aurally assaulted and disappointed (what a fool!). When the studio versions of those songs came out I melted they were so good, so I saw them live again in 06 touring with SJ material and it stands to this day as the best live music experience I have ever had. 06 was by far the best year in terms of music and energy; those shows were still somewhat intimate, but the music was really big and beautiful. oh nostalgia...

[Wilbur]

Awesome story, I only wish I had heard about them as early as that.

Here's my story, not as exciting... my college had a free music streaming service that I subscribed to (and that was fairly advanced for 2007 now that I think of it). I had already heard "Bros" sometime earlier that year and liked it, but didn't give it much of a second thought. Without knowing that Panda was a member of the band, I played SJ because it was under New Releases and I used to sample a track or two from most of those every day. I remember just laughing at Peacebone because it was so crazy and such an audacious way to start an album, and just kept listening, and ended up really liking For Reverend Green too.

The kicker didn't come for about a week after that, when the Peacebone single showed up on the service and I listened to Safer. After one listen to that song there was no looking back, I went total fanboy.

[jetski]

Sometime in 2009 a friend of mine showed me the My Girls video. I thought it was a decent song and cool-looking video but didn't think any more of it.

Fast-forward to summer 2011 - I went to Pitchfork with the same friend when AnCo were headlining. At this point I still hadn't gotten into the band and didn't know any songs, but it didn't matter. I was very very drunk for the concert, to the point where all I can really remember is dancing nonstop for the entire set and having a great time.

Fast-forward once more to December of last year. On a whim I thought to myself, hmm I never really gave Animal Collective a proper chance as a band. I had actually at one point downloaded the band's discography but simply hadn't even listened to it. So I started with Merriweather Post Pavilion and worked backwards. It's been quite a journey and I've finally heard just about everything in the studio discography, although they're so prolific that I'm sure there's a few releases I've missed... and of course unreleased songs.

[albion moonlight]

i first heard ac in 2003 when here comes the indian came out. i was a sophomore in high school and i was really exploring my musical tastes. i din't real get it (now i love it) but it intrigued me enough to put animal collective on my radar. so, when sung tongs came out i got it right away because of the positive reviews it was getting. I wasn't sure what to think after leaf hose and who could win a rabbit but once the softest voice came on it clicked for me. it was like the softest voice was slow enough that i could wrap my brain around what their sound was and from there i was hooked. been eating up everything they put out since. it's been magical.

[robgnarr]

2009 when i watched the Alien Workshop (RIP) Mind Field skate video. I was so intrigued by both my girls and in the flowers when i heard them in the video, and sure enough i figured out they were both by the same amazing band been hooked ever since

[denjanenna]

saw the feels album cover right around the time it came out on cduniverse.com & listened to all the 30-second clips, but thought it was a little too strange for me...saw the album at tower records for like ten bucks and impulsively bought it...listened to a song or two, didn't care for it.

re-visited it after several months, loved it & then got all the boots from '06 & fell in love...

[GarfieldWallace]

Started listening after the MPP hype. Liked the album a lot and introduced them for my friends. At the time we listened a lot to Post-Rock and Pink Floyd and felt that this band was something new and cool. Then one night i heard Winters Love (best musical experience of my life) and since then they've been my favorite band!

[elks]

I saw two people arguing in the comments section of a MGMT youtube video over whether or not the music sounded like AC. I didn't know who they were, so I watched their Letterman performance and was very psyched on their style. I had a leftover iTunes giftcard, so I blew the rest of the money on MPP (was almost about to buy Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix instead lol)

[finnyboy665]

I was browsing reddit, and came across a post about music like MGMT (I was, and still am, a big fan of theirs). I saw a reference to AnCo there, and decided to see for myself what they were all about. In hindsight, starting from STGSTV might have been a bad idea, but now I love their early stuff, and their new stuff I like even more.

[valar602]

Pretty sure in 2006 a friend told me they were my band. I said I had heard there name a lot and never listened to them. Leaf House was the first song I heard. 2007 rolled in and was an incredible year for them and to be a new fan. I remember watching the midi festival vids over and over.

[leanderandco]

I was really into Green Day when I was in middle school, then I started getting into the strokes, franz ferdinand, arctic monkeys. I wish I could say some hipster friend or something turned me on to AC but I just saw mpp on some pitchfork list and looked up In the Flowers. A couple listens between that and My Girls and I was hooked

[Me Tiger]

I had been reading Pitchfork for several months back then. And I saw the band's name several times there, thinking: 'What a ridiculous name for a band! For sure it's some hipster stuff they're hyping.' And I didn't even try to make a listen
Then, some days later, Merriweather came out getting that high rating. I became even more irritated: 'These guys seem to release an album like every two months, make pretentious covers and be so much critically acclaimed. Really, they can't be this good'. So, I downloaded the album and started to listen. I remember that I couldn't understand much from that first listen. Music was rather chaotic. It was almost over and then suddenly Brother Sport went it! It was like an instant dose of support and joy. I think I started to cry when it played. So, I was listening to the record over and over since then, and within 2-3 days things crystallised.
...
It's my favorite band of nowadays now

[fly]

Woops kinda lengthy

Spoiler: show

About a year ago, but my love did not spark for them until the beginning of this year (I guess Im kind of a new fan lol)
I was on Pandora, I forgot what station... I think indie pop? Haha
Anyways, I was going through many skips and finally arrived at a Panda Bear song, and it was Comfy in Nautica. I really liked it so I bookmarked it and then made a Panda Bear station and started liking some of his other songs like Surfer's Hymn and I'm Not.
One day, a band called Animal Collective popped up on PB's radio. Daily Routine started playing and I thought... "Hey, this kinda sounds like the Panda guy!" lol. I had no idea Panda Bear was in Animal Collective.. I feel really stupid thinking about it, especially since theyre both animal related. I liked the song but after that, I kinda forgot about them and never really listened to any of their songs ever again.
A few weeks later I was messaging my friend on facebook and we were talking about music and then she shows me that video on youtube of Avey and Panda going crazy to Covered in Frogs.. I thought it was the most obnoxious thing ever.. I told my friend the video was dumb but then I recognized the title and see "Panda Bear" in the title and I'm like "wait what??? Who is Avey Tare and this sounds nothing like the Panda Bear I heard on Pandora!!" I do a little research and it turns out they are both in a band called Animal Collective LOL. After that, I made an Animal Collective Radio Station on Pandora and the the first songs that came up were Tikwid and Baleen Sample. I liked them and ended up downloading those 2 songs. Still decided not to go deeper in AC and PB's discography because I guess I wasn't that interested yet or something.
Fast forward to 6 months and I decide to revisit AC's station on Pandora after ignoring it for so long, and Did You See The Words comes on and I instantly fallen in love. I replayed that song countless times, I danced to it, I learned the lyrics, I showed my family, and I was just super madly in love. I knew AC was a weird band that did a bunch of different sounds so I used that AC chart for beginners and downloaded all of MPP on my iPhone. I only get through like 3 songs and get kinda bored. The same month I was hospitalized and I finished all of MPP while in there and I start to get even more in love with AC. They really helped me during a tough time. I felt really stressed at the time, but simply putting on Brothersport and crazily dancing in my living room would make everything feel alright and eventually things did end up getting better. After that, I explored more of AC's and PB's stuff on my own without the beginners chart and I knew there would be no turning back cuz this band was truly something else

[Emceegreg]

I think my friend told me about Sung Tongs being really good in the fall of '04 when I was a freshman in college. I listened to the shit out of the album.

[DrPanda]

Right after Sung Tongs came out. I kept reading about it on year end lists on like Amazon and shit. It was still hard to find full albums online at that time so I only had a few key songs like Who Could Win a Rabbit and Winters Love I had grabbed off Kazaa. Then Feels came out and my friend burned it for me. Game over.

[The Peacefish]

I got into AC right after my brother went to college in the fall of 2010. His roommate was from Chicago and was really into experimental/indie music and always went to Pitchfork Music festival or Lollapallooza. I talked to him about it and curiosity led me to look up what type of bands played at those festivals. I listened to a lot of new and interesting artists and bands that fall but when I first looked up Animal Collective and heard My Girls I fell in love. Then I looked up all the other MPP songs and bought the album instantly. Worked my way back through everything and here I am.

[ImpendingPeacefish]

wrote:

I got into AC right after my brother went to college in the fall of 2010. His roommate was from Chicago and was really into experimental/indie music and always went to Pitchfork Music festival or Lollapallooza. I talked to him about it and curiosity led me to look up what type of bands played at those festivals. I listened to a lot of new and interesting artists and bands that fall but when I first looked up Animal Collective and heard My Girls I fell in love. Then I looked up all the other MPP songs and bought the album instantly. Worked my way back through everything and here I am.

This is my actual account and I found out my password for this account. Sorry for the spam/weird explanation.

[Lemon]

I had never heard of them until late 2007 in my senior year of high school. My friend turned me on to them. He saw the Conan #1 performance and that's how he got into them. By the time water curses came out I was hoooooked

[El Camino]

ha, i just thought we had two separate peacefish

[ImpendingPeacefish]

What? haha. That's why I explained it since it was kind of weird. Especially since one was THE Peacefish which sounds as if that was the real deal. But this is my real/main account and now I won't lose my information for it.

Hi.

[Dallou]

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

[terrestrialjane]

^ . ^

[cassette]

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.