[Ewok]

Hey guys, Danse Manatee has long been my favourite AC album, so I decided to do a track by track review about why. I hope you enjoy it.

1. A Manatee Danse
This track has an ominous feel with some videogame esque sounds and noises. I think it sets the tone for what this album is about though – the videogame sounds relate to the childhood themes and the other sounds give some vague confused feeling (more of that to come, much more).

02. Penguin Penguin
The drumming is intense on this thing. There’s a high tempo to the drunken jazzy playing and then warped garbled vocals. I don’t think they’re trying too hard here but I mean that in a nice way, it’s unaffected – it is what it is. It feels like they hit record and this naturally came about. The problem I had with their new album is it’s the first one of theirs to lose that feeling and feel overly calculated.

03. Another White Singer
Simplicity is key to this track. The low end electronic noises form the beat alongside claps and high sounding harmonies. I get how some would see this as quirky, zany, and annoying but I find it inspiring; they aren’t playing by the rule book on this track, they’re not jumping on any bandwagon. With so many bands I feel like they want to be hip or copy another band in sound or essence but this stuff is truly original. I can see it’s flawed and not great as stand alone music at times, but there’s this purity to it. There’s a lot of experimental stuff where I feel conscious of the bands intents when I listen to it. I often feel the members are trying to be cool or make anti-music to fit into some scene, but this has this punk rock ideal of not caring about how you’re perceived and as trite as it is to say – just making what you want to make.

................


check out the rest at:

http://boxmanchronicles.wordpress.com/2 ... e-manatee/

[Dearest]

You're missing a couple songs

[clayton]

ah yes, danse manatee, my favourite nu metal album

[terrestrialjane]

Bad crumbs ... Yum

[Ewok]

Danse Manatee really symbolises the chaos of childhood to me. Spirit had the nostalgia thing down heavier, HCTI felt like a growth into early adulthood. Danse has the nostalgia mixed with emotional confusion feel and I connect with it more as I grow older.

[terrestrialjane]

Ewok wrote:

emotional confusion

That's a accurate description of Danse. I'm sure that's how they were feeling ... ; ))

[streetflashhh]

i do not like this album

[colin]

streetflashhh wrote:

i do not like this album

great appraisal buddy guy

[terrestrialjane]

The songs are a lot more catchy than some people who do not favor the album think. I mean they're all really listenable and enjoyable after several takes and listens to it. It's just really abstract psych pop ?

The first song I got into was runnin the round ball which is always great. But to all of the people who do not approve of this album , please clarify as to why this album does not appeal to thou ...

[meetthelightchild]

Great review! I agree with you in everything. Once Danse Manatee finally clicks in, turns out it's very normal music hidden under noise. It feels like early childhood to me, experiencing the weirdness of the world, not knowing why or how things happen. It's all magic. Hey, even the drawings inside the CD case reinforce the childlike aspect of the album.

[streetflashhh]

PumpkinsFlashback wrote:

The songs are a lot more catchy than some people who do not favor the album think. I mean they're all really listenable and enjoyable after several takes and listens to it. It's just really abstract psych pop ?

The first song I got into was runnin the round ball which is always great. But to all of the people who do not approve of this album , please clarify as to why this album does not appeal to thou ...

i dont want to say too lo-fi
but too lo-fi

other than that, im just not that into bananas sonic experimentation and this album has lots of it. I mean, AC is all about that stuff, but this album is crazy on a lets-fuck-with-frequencies-level and my ears do not enjoy that.

[Ewok]

meetthelightchild wrote:

Great review! I agree with you in everything. Once Danse Manatee finally clicks in, turns out it's very normal music hidden under noise. It feels like early childhood to me, experiencing the weirdness of the world, not knowing why or how things happen. It's all magic. Hey, even the drawings inside the CD case reinforce the childlike aspect of the album.

Great username by the way!

The vocal breakdown in that track is one of my favourite AC moments.

[IkoOvo]

PumpkinsFlashback wrote:

The first song I got into was runnin the round ball which is always great.

I feel you

[IkoOvo]

I've said this before, but the reason I like Danse so much is that it takes up an incredibly unique space in my mind.

[archie]

HEY now can u CATCH the ball, when im PLAYIN with the ball, i might LOSE MY HEAD

[IkoOvo]

best fukin song ever

[Calvin]

review from 2010

I'm amazed how much this album has grown on me in the past few months. It's to the point that honestly, Spirit feels slightly naive. It's a beautiful, lovely album; don't get me wrong. But the more I listen to Danse the more one can tell that Danse was the work of a collective coming together -- Spirit was the work of one person's ideas. There is just another level of energy present in Danse that simply doesn't exist in Spirit Their Gone. Its an album that goes so many places and has so many different ideas -- and on first glance and/or listen it kinda seems like they really didn't know what the fuck they were doing. It isn't that they didn't know -- it was that they were learning and exploring. They were figuring themselves out as a band and when they did -- they put out this album. And that's just wild. The variation and the change-ups and the pure energy on Danse Manatee are just something else. You will never hear an album like this ever again from any other band. It is truly Animal Collective's debut.

On what I feel the album is about:

I feel like Spirit is about being conscious of the fact that the beautiful feeling you are having isn't going to last forever, but enjoying it anyways. I think Danse Manatee kinda has this sense of desperation to it. As if the feeling -is- vanishing and with it a lot of negative and pessimistic feelings are brought to the surface. The feeling's fading, this love is fading and this life is fading...that can be kinda depressing. I think that's what this record kinda talks about, but as always there is always this very optimistic side to it where you still can appreciate the very subtle things and just life itself as a concept (but at the same time those same things can make you angry and even insane -- maybe in a slightly more enlightened way, though).

[Fan]

I don't have any criticism for Danse Manatee. Tbh, it's my least listened to AnCo release, next to HCTI. But I did have a unique first listen with the album, that might or might not have tainted my bias towards it.

A few years ago, I played the album whilst taking a nap on my love seat couch. It was mid-afternoon. The album took me to some strange meditative state that felt somewhere between completely relaxed and tense. I think I only napped for 30 mins. I woke up in a cold sweat. Had to stop listening.

Maybe I should try that again? The real question is, is Animal Collective good napping music?

[jetski]

I initially gave this album only a few listen-throughs, maybe 3 at most and I wasn't getting into it so I moved on. A few months later something drew me back to it and I've now listened through it around 10 times and I absolutely love it.

That's definitely the longest that an AnCo album has taken for me to get into it but I can definitely say I dig this album a lot now. What I love is how incredibly disjointed it is. I'm pretty sure isn't a single song where the band members are all playing a straight-ahead rhythm, and a lot of the time the songs just sort of drift along.

Meet the Light Child is brilliant. I love the high-pitched frequencies on Danse, and Spirit for that matter. I just hope I'm not killing my hearing in the process...

[jetski]

I've read countless album reviews and articles where Animal Collective are described as childlike. To me, Danse is their most childlike album. At points it practically sounds like the band are just toddlers banging on pots and pans.