Still grooving

[not_your_real]

It's been 7 months now of compulsive Animal Collective listening. I have the album I started with, two of their earlier albums, a solo album from one of the members, and some live concert recordings, and I plan to buy more albums as I get to them.

I still get the rush of... serotonin? Some happy relaxing brain chemical, whenever the music starts up, especially that first album. It washes over me like a cool drink of water combined with a warm fuzzy blanket. I listen to an album or two every day.

It feels qualitatively different from other music I would have placed in the same genre. Mere music doesn't fit the same brain-hole that this stuff does. Dissonance, syncopation, barbershop harmony, dance beats, occasionally accented with bleated or yelped vocals. Somehow it works.

Comments

[ksleet.livejournal.com]

I just searched for them on Youtube and listened to a song called "My Girls." It was pretty good! Is that fairly representative of what all their music sounds like, or is there an album/song that you'd recommend for someone who's never heard them before?

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

"My Girls" was one of the two singles that sucked me in on the radio. They have a few other songs like that, especially on this year's "Merriweather Post Pavillion" album (not a live album, and they've never performed there :)

They have some other modes as well, though. There are some quiet songs with ethereal harmonies, and there are some really experimental songs that use noise - not like heavy-metal noise, but just noises; Panda Bear's solo album "Person Pitch" has the DC Metro's door-closing sound at the end of one track, and this year's single "Summertime Clothes" uses a sample from a tired-sounding air conditioner - and strange, even grating vocalizations. These latter songs remind me a little of the stuff Art of Noise did in the 80's. Good examples are "Leaf House", "Winter's Love" and "Grass". (There's a great acapella/drums performance of Winter's Love on Youtube.) This is the part about them that is most unique; well, this and the way they can combine noise and sweet harmonies in unexpected ways. The noise is the part that fits into my brain in a particularly satisfying way. It's so tactile.

Apart from My Girls, the other radio single this year was "Summertime Clothes" (mentioned above for noise sampling, but overall a dancy electronica song), which is a lot like My Girls in its energy and feel. The third high-energy song on this year's album is "Brother Sport". For the most part their album tracks tend to sound better than live performances, BTW; Youtube is full of concert videos that are less good than the albums.