Collected Animals

Can't believe it's been 10 years to the day since this monochromatic wonder was dropped. Time has an odd way of fucking with the sense of time passing. Anyway, shoutout to Drone, Friendship Bracelet, and Benfica for being the (perhaps) underrated heroes of the album. Can't wait to hear what SB and PB are cooking up as we speak.

I listened to this recently actually. Still rules.

Moop: summon Pete

Benfica is everything

I have to sorta be in the exact right mood for most of the album. And good headphones/speakers are a must

I was at a used CD store the other day and couldn't find the thing I came there to get and saw Tomboy so I thought what the hell, and my god, blasting it in my car has been such an experience.

2 weeks ago if you asked me id be like 'yah TB pretty good, a few stunners' but now? Maybe im fully in-tune with a decade ago or something cuz god damn, apparently this is like... top 10 albums of all time for me?

I can't explain it but the whole thing is just perfect. it sounds like white magic. title track is the only one I dont really love and even that is kinda epic. there's something heavy, but also beautiful and like...softly warm at the same time. There is a dire-ness but also a severity to its beauty. Harsh and soothing at the same time and vocals blasted to shit w/ reverb, I mean those harmonies are fucking baked in the stuff, and at the time we didn't know he was gonna start to move away from that.

the world of this one is-- I think-- his most unique. it feels like the fantasy genre but also sci-fi at the same time. he is like fully powered up for the whole run time (Super saiyan 2 prbly) and just vining. Also the samples? fuck so much good sampling here, esp on the beat of Friendship Bracelt. that thing is fuckin lucid and living.

idk man like I loved it at the time but it had since receded in my mind and now, as of like a week ago, its my far-and-away favorite PB LP. and THEN Homies honestly. sorry, PP, you faded-ass hoe.

TB makes my ears feel good and sitting in it while blasting in my car like I would sit in an warm espom-salt bath if life affirming. so there

In honor of the tenth year anniversary posting alternate tracklist. Listened to it and p happy with the results! Hope one person listens to it in this order

Drone
Surfer's Hymn
Afterburner
Scheherezade
Slow Motion
Tomboy
Benfica
Last Night at the Jetty
Friendship Bracelet
You Can Count on Me
Alsatian Darn

The Tomboy hype cycle brought me to this site and I don't think I've been more excited for an album since then, It's wild how long ago that was

I remember listening to the Governor's Island bootleg to check out the tracks that hadn't been released as singles, which sent me down the rabbit hole of listening to all the other old bootlegs

Convinced the new panda stuff will be country

great post dio! love 2 gush for this album. was my favourite pb album for a long time, only eclipsed recently when buoys came out and I obsessed over that for a while. but tomboy is bigger and like you say, seems to have an entire world it exists within.
I listened to it so much around 2013-2015 that I don't go back too often now, but serendipitously I did chuck it on the turntable last week and boy it brought me back. what a great album


say, can I make a bad mistake?

One of those albums that I have grown less capable of listening to as I get older and more lonely. I agree with everything in your post Dio but at the same time that hollow feeling in this album gives me the soul shivers. Last night at the jetty and Benfica are my favs. “To win’s not all that it’s about” fuckin A panda, it feels like no one else in the world feels that way rn

“To win’s not all that it’s about” fuckin A panda, it feels like no one else in the world feels that way rn

Some might say that.

But there is not a thing more true or natural than wanting to win

Tomboy's a symbol for antitheses - a fulcrum under opposing ideas.

You Can Count on Me (sounds like "can't") offers doubtful reassurance that is only temporary anyway:

Want to put a bubble 'round you like a force-field switch
Keep you secured just a little bit
But I know a secret child is just a silly trick
Who grows up to lose that force-field switch

That may describe the Panda/listener relationship.

Surfer's Hymn also decides between risk and safety: "would I would I, why wouldn't I?".

Last Night at the Jetty seems to be about good-bye-ing a relationship to do one's own thing.

Friendship Bracelet is about finding a healthy distance from friends to preserve either/both self and 'ship: "cannot be destroyed a friend's ring at the side".

Cooper wrote:

“To win’s not all that it’s about” fuckin A panda, it feels like no one else in the world feels that way rn

Some might say that.

But there is not a thing more true or natural than wanting to win

But the second u win you’re faced w absurdity. That’s when the nature of existence actually sets in. Until another chance at winning comes up...

this album is incredible and one of my top favorite albums on the planet.

jetty, count on me, afterburner, agh god what a great fucking piece of art. definitely this album is one that pulled me into the dedicated animal collective fan zone.

just wish those digital files for the expanded edition would finally make their way online :')

Benfica is so huge i wish that final arpeggio/drone lasted 10 minutes

TO WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

TO WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Listened to afterburner in the shower last night

very very good album!

My fav memory related to this album might be Panda playing Drone loud as fuck at the 2018 show (best one of my life, homies stuff and Bouys stuff mostly). I think I never got the song before but damn that one was intense.

My fav memory related to this album might be Panda playing Drone loud as fuck at the 2018 show (best one of my life, homies stuff and Bouys stuff mostly). I think I never got the song before but damn that one was intense.

Rly wish he played that when I saw him that year. Probs the only time I'll ever see him

ive only seen him play Greaper stuff live but he closed with Surfers hymn and it blew my socks off

^i saw him in greaper tour and I remember the twinkly synth in surfers hymn had a ridiculous sonic body and felt like giant waves of light and glass

just wish those digital files for the expanded edition would finally make their way online :')

god, SAME.

i used to be a really big "original version only" purist of this album but, like, Pete and Noah put some INCREDIBLE work into the final LP and it only got better with age. gorgeous record.

Love this version.

.

The version of ‘The Preakness’ from the keep cassette is pretty much a tomboy track too. It was included on the track listing of the box set. Such a good song and probs my favorite version of the Preakness!

I wasn't able to see him during the Tomboy tour, but the first show I saw when I came to New York in 2014 was him at Irving Plaza where he opened with Last Night at the Jetty

Then the last show I saw before I left the city in 2018 was at Brooklyn Steel where he closed with Jetty, which is funny to think about. There were a lot of shows in between those two, but the same song bookended them all

Wow, I never got to see him during the Greaper years. I saw him at Webster Hall (David Byrne was sitting feet away from me) in 2011. I saw him again at Desert Daze in 2017, he opened both shows with YCCOM :').

Love this version.

I love Tomboy ? I was rly disappointed by the mixing at first but it's aged so well :')

I saw him on the Tomboy tour, loved it, motorik Preak and Bros as an encore were fucking immense. I find it tough or unappealing to listen to TB these days, though. It coincided with some pretty hard times coming back to the UK and readjusting to a new life after a long time away, and happy. I wasn't happy around Tomboy and it was definitely a crutch to get me through the long, dreary bus rides and the suburban ghost town and the pure absence of life after years of pulsating, evolving chaos in China. I remember listening to Bullseye in bed and sobbing, very euphoric because of the beauty and power of the song but also devasted with the contrast of static, inert England.

I learned to love the place, not again, but for the first time and I'm very happy here now, but I wasn't then. That monochromatic existence was perfectly reflected in Tomboy, and the hymnal solemnity matched my furrowed brow.

It's a very interesting record these days. It sounds like a difficult record to make, almost deliberately veiled to disguise the depth of feeling and sadness and responsibility underpinning it. Where Person Pitch still transports me to a uniquely light, confident and expressive place and uniquely happy place, for me, Tomboy feels and sounds like an albatross. It resonated emotionally but it's not a mood I want to explore at this point, a decade on. There's a sombre weight to it which I seldom wish to carry. I feel similarly about Down There.

Magnificent records, though, and in years to come I will be voyeuristically drawn to their enveloping sadness.

but like so... TB is really good. Do y'all think y'all fully know that and have accepted that in 2021? As a 19 year old it was like "good". but like. as a almost-30 year old, it seems... beyond adjectives. beyond qualifiers or rankings. It truly is kind of spiritual?

Do any moments top the meditative deep-yoga spirituality of "Im Not"? The free-wheeling-ness of "Bros" [brothers]? Does Bullseye- I MEAN- Afterburner's "tribal" chaos top that of the crazy part of "Good Girl Carrots"? like maybe not necessarily. But keep in mind, this is the first time we heard PB in such high definition. I mean even higher than MPP honestly. 'Tis wide-screen.

But that's a tiny part of it, idk why would I lead with that. I am NOT prepared to sell you on this. But like. Play it loud man. It's so damn huge. it might be the huge-est music I've ever heard? And also the most aesthetically unique AND uniform experience I've had in an album? MBV honestly rivals. but like.

man. I can't word it out in words y'know. but this is so good. and its so much better to me in 2021 than it ever was. it feels complete and realized. It feels good on my ears. And deep-- not just sonically, but lyrically even. Im Not are some of his best lyrics but this is the beginning of his more Robert Frost/Pound-inspired imagistic style, and is kind of a marriage b/w the literalisms/colloquialisms of PP and the sometimes obtuse poetics of post-PBvsGR.

this album is basically a concept about the Q-continuum from Stark Trek TNG discovering a celestial realm soooooooo. deal w/ that.

also, just consider that Mr. Noah is the worst PB song of all time and that's nearly the opening "single" of his next LP. just consider that. [TB title track is also iffy, also the 2nd track, but like still]

Mr. Noah sucks ass, damn. wtf.

I just listened to Benfica for the first time in awhile, might be my favorite track on the whole album. One of his best melodies.

That's a good point about the lyrics, Tomboy is def a sort of transitional piece between the hyper literal simplistic lyrics on Person Pitch and the later stuff where he is just wilin out with collages of odd metaphors. Mr. Noah is one of the best songs from the whole reaper era tho wtf.

I know we're drifting from the topic at hand here but Faces in the Crowd aka Ms Pac-man is head and shoulders above the rest of the pbvsgr era tracks. So fun to sing, great lyrics, totally danceable. Mr Noah is good but I find the production so maximal it's hard to focus on any one thing. Would've been great stripped back to just that roaring synth, drums and vocals - homies style. Less doggy noises and modular bloops at least for some of the song idk

ALSO Tomboy title track is great, I don't get why people often see it as a caveat to the album as a whole. I grapple more with Slow Motion but people adore that

Slow Motion easily the dud track on this, if there has to be one

Bite your tongue dude

No, I get ulcers !

oof, drunk-posted about my new-found love for TB again last night? so be it.

nah I do like the title track pretty good, but it kind of feels like it's almost from a different project. I mean not really, but like it and Afterburner are the only like... nearly angry sounding TB tracks. Angry is wrong word. Resolute maybe.

It was fitting that there was like a super-hero looking figure on the single art. Shit sounds like a nuclear-powered cosmic being. Also his guitar sounds like horns or something on this one, which is kinda wild. The harmonies are a little weird for me. when he says "Oh-pen my eyes", I feel like. Idk, that note is weird for me, can't explain.

oh also, just remembered this song retroactively make me seriously sus when the first New Town Burnout bootlegs came out. I was like oh fr he just doing a full-band version. But obviously that ended up being way different so who even knows what that take was.

I remember thinking parts of Slow Motion sounded so sick out of context but the actual track is the only one where the repetition might wear slightly thin. I like it tho overall. It's kind of a cool 1-2 punch tho, (1-2-3 if you count YCCOM).

It's like YCCOM is like "whats up, there's gonna be some romantic, sweeter vibes on this" then TB is like "hey also its gonna be kind of heavy and austere" and then SM is like "im the only one that is vaguely hip-hop ish" and then that never really happens again.

Then Surfers Hymn is like "stand back, me and Alsatian and LNAtJ are the real deal modern pop classics.

And Friendship/Afterburner are kind of like Neo-prog.

And Benfica/Drone/Shehera just chillin and vibing. And Preakness like isn't on the main release version for some reason. Probably shoulda gone after Afterburner before Benfica maybe.

I want him to play fully electric guitar again kinda.