Collected Animals

Good ones? Bad ones? Can you rank them? Why do we love ranking things so much


Sung Tongs
Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished
Strawberry Jam
ODDSAC
Water Curses
Feels
Campfire Songs
Meeting of the Waters
Tangerine Reef
Transverse Temporal Gyrus
Animal Crack Box

^ all great. "feels" is such an interesting title now in the context of all the memes about feels from the 2010s or whenever

HCTI obviously cringy
Ark is difficult because it's been HCTI to me for so long

Painting With has got to be one of my least favourite album titles ever
Centipede Hz ehh, it's not terrible
Merriweather Post Pavilion is maybe a bit too postmodernist for me
Prospect Hummer ehhh
Danse Manatee eurgh not a fan of that s
Hollinndagain nope
Bridge to Quiet ehhh

Great podcast topic.

Ark is confusing bc that's what the demo album used to be called. I also think they're a two word minimum band as far as album titles go (Hollindagainn not off the hook either). Shouldve been renamed Ark Itch

i like ark so much more than hcti. the best album title is spirit they vanished... conveys the feel of the album so well. aside from that water curses and strawberry jam are probably my fav titles

When I was a wee ignorant lad, HCTI was my favorite title by far, now it’s been soiled etc. so Danse Manatee is a strong replacement for #1

Sung Tongs, Centipede Hz and Strawberry Jam are the best at eliciting the feelings of the music for me.

For me, HCTI always conjured innocent images of kids running around the backyard and the surrounding woods in headdresses chasing each other, laughing, shooting plastic arrows at the family dog and banging on drums.

TTG, Crack Box and Danse are my least favs.

yea i always felt the same about HCTI. it reminds me of the game cowboys vs. indians, which is such a perfect anco topic--a game for supposedly innocent children who are actually engaged in pretending to shoot each other and reenacting the genocide at the founding of the country. the way darkness and evil can infect innocence... that sort of thing.

i was a little bummed that anco changed it. for me the title is an example of 'just because a character in a piece of art says something problematic, that doesn't mean the artist believes it.' similarly, just because the title of htci refers to something evil, that doesn't mean anco is pro-genocide. tbh the idea that the title is 'objectifying' native americans is a bit unpersuasive.

but o well. not gonna lose any sleep over it or any other crabby identity politics type disputes. there definitely is something a bit strange and apolitical about a lot of early 2000s indie that anco aren't immune from, and i think their hearts were in the right place. glad the royalties are going to seeding soverienty. plus i always that it was dope that the working title was ark.

i think campfire songs is a good title too. both very evocative when you think about it (ghost stories, out in nature in the dark, around a fire, etc.) and sort of general and unassuming.

MPP is my favourite, just a gorgeous rhythm to it. Person Pitch is another belter. I guess I like plosives.

hcti never really bothered me, didn't seem like bad intent. sung tongs is an awful name and probably my least fave. campfire songs is great. MPP is awesome because i live near it and it always made me feel in touch with AC. like yeah they're from where I'm from, cool. strawberry jam is awesome too, just sounds pure and appealing. oddsac... nah. what is that.

Sung Tongs is one of my favorites just because the liner notes talk about "tongs" instead of songs, it matches the cutesy forest folk vibe and is also kind of a tongue twister (tongue songs) that matches the knottiness of the songwriting

MPP confused me just because it's named after a venue near where I grew up where only really mainstream people performed, so I already had associations with it

Prospect Hummer is a good title. also loved HCTI just because it had a really mysterious air to it especially when coupled with the album art. and yeah Feels is perfect

I'm low-key obsessed with titles and animal collective rule at em. Obviously nomenclature also ties in with bootleg culture. What a buzz it is when they drop album details and all the speculation can begin. Anyways

I think maybe Feels had been devalued a little by the memes. Memes age weirdly and 'right in the feels' already seems like a cringey artifact from my teenage years. Though maybe that vibes with the album, I dunno

Perfect tier:
Sung tongs
Merriweather Post Pavilion (impossible to conceive of any other name for this. Monolithic)
Fall be kind
Strawberry jam
Spirit they've gone
Person Pitch
Down There
ODDSAC
Campfire songs
Meeting of the waters
Panda bear meets the grim reaper
Prospect Hummer
Limber simmer over

Good tier:
Feels
Tomboy
Buoys
A day with the homies
Cows on hourglass pond
Slasher flicks
People
Bridge to quiet
Water curses

Neutral tier:
Danse manatee
Hollindagain
Eucalyptus
Sleep Cycle
HCTI
Tangerine reef

Eh tier:
Painting with
Centipede HZ
TTG

MPP is my favourite, just a gorgeous rhythm to it. Person Pitch is another belter. I guess I like plosives.

Yeah it's very soft at the edges, also all the words start with your lips together m-p-p



If I made an album that was the antithesis of MPP I'd just call it "c*nt" or something

Limber simmer over??

I like Painting With, it's campy but fits the album well imo

best
down there - conveys the albums theme/feels so well
animal crack box - lol
water curses - it just sounds cool

worst
prospect hummer - what does this mean?
monkey been to burn town - this sounds like the name of a movie from the 50s that stars a monkey
hollinndagain - what does this mean??

Limber simmer over??

yeah whats this

scrambledgreggs wrote:

Limber simmer over??

yeah whats this

Only other time I’ve seen this phrase is somebody suggesting it as the title for the 2021 album, on reddit I think could’ve been here tho

WASTERED

i like the title a day with the homies but at the same i feel that there's nothing on the album that conveys that scenery. for me is more a night album than a day album, and i don't feel other people around him, i can only imagine him alone in the dark pressing buttons and singing

best
down there - conveys the albums theme/feels so well
animal crack box - lol
water curses - it just sounds cool

worst
prospect hummer - what does this mean?
monkey been to burn town - this sounds like the name of a movie from the 50s that stars a monkey
hollinndagain - what does this mean??

love being on the same page as you Ben <3

I love good album title blends and Monkey Been to Burntown just reminds me of all the ones I came up with that just sounded stupid lol. Although there's definitely a silly charm to it and I'm sure the silliness may have been the point.

How is animal crack box not animal crackers box ?

started makin' my list of god tier titles but realized they're also my favorite albums...so either they know how to name 'em or I can't separate the titles from the music

the best album title is spirit they vanished... conveys the feel of the album so well

agreed. i think "spirit they're vanished, spirit they've vanished" sets up the animal collective mythos perfectly.

yea i always felt the same about HCTI. it reminds me of the game cowboys vs. indians, which is such a perfect anco topic--a game for supposedly innocent children who are actually engaged in pretending to shoot each other and reenacting the genocide at the founding of the country. the way darkness and evil can infect innocence... that sort of thing.

really well said. the "here comes" feels foreboding and ominous, just like the intro to native belle, but then so many moments on the record expose the darkness as concealed levity, which is an inversion to your comment on the childlike quality of the album title, but that just makes the title archetypally fitting imo.

MPP is my favourite, just a gorgeous rhythm to it. Person Pitch is another belter. I guess I like plosives.

agreed. one of ac's strength's in titling songs and records is their ability to create images through the marriage of a word's content with its phonetic feeling.

hollinndagain - what does this mean??

i wish i would search my old posts on here, or could search posts on earlier versions of CA, because once upon a time i broke down the Icelandic etymology of "hollinndagain", the song titles on "pullhair rubeye", and kria brekkan's name. in typical avey fashion, the title is a play on words of a few icelandic words that are mashed together and phonetically spelled out. i have no idea if dave had that in mind when he made the title, but hey, the proof is in the pudding. could make sense if he met múm or kria in the early NY days. if i have the time soon i can try to break it down again.

Personal fav is Tickle Vultures.

^ Hahahahaha YESSSSSS


Blew my fucking mind that that came out before Water Curses was even announced, they fucking destroyed AC with that video.

Also holy shit hello again mildew on rice. So glad you're still making music, one of your older albums blew my mind back in the day. This song The Scarecrow is awesome.

How is animal crack box not animal crackers box ?

Hahahahahaha nice, yeah I guess Crack Box just rolls off the tongue more easily. Also dunno if they would have had copyright issues lol

WORST:

Bridge to Quiet
Monkey Been To Burntown

OK:
Feels (they get a pass because it was 2004)
Centipede Hz

UNDERRATED:
Painting With
Danse Manatee (the S is so nice. also this album has really good song titles)
Hollinndagain (this shit rules)
Animal Crack Box

BEST:

Sung Tongs
Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished
Rumble in the Grumble

I had to look up "Rumble in the Grumble" lol, we have another contender for Disco Dennis and Tickle Vultures

Uh, it's not actually called Meeting on the Waters but maybe that was a typo


The title of the EP is but a lot of people make the same mistake so whatever

Change your name to typo's bich

my favourite AC album title is the title of their next album, the sprawling 90+ minute The Ghosts of John Waters' Typothetical Errors