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November 30, 2006
Australian Animal Collective
You were excited for a second that I had discovered the "Australian Animal Collective", weren't you? Then you could have casually tossed about phrases like "Oh, Wombat, are totally the Australian Animal Collective." Well it's not going to happen.
What I refer to is the geographically specific release of Animal Collective's foray into the Australian tour CD, joining a proud and domestically frustrating tradition. For the discerning Ocker ear, Brooklyn's own provide new studio material, and a live version of the title song, "People." The music is not unlike last year's Feels, meaning it is tuneful despite its pronounced oddity.
Animal Collective - "People"
This unintelligible epic starts calmly as guitar strum and wayward piano flutters lounge about on the grass. As the speed nudges up, nervous tingles emerge in the form of incessant drumstick-ery. Riding in gallantly, comes a great, lazy echo of a Lee Hazlewood guitar line. This descending melody anchors the song, the one constant spine in the composition's developing shape. As two or three more sonic layers settle into place, affirmative yelling ("Yea Yeahh", to be exact), comes across strangely subdued, leaving you unprepared for an ambush white noise "eeeeHreeeeeex Hxaxaxh" screech. What sounds like a gang of prowler monkeys darts around the track next, ever so often tripping over each other in accidental harmony. It hangs together, though. That guitar line braves the feral elements stoicly, exhibiting a Game Warden's illusion of control as he leads Safari. It's not really the dominant force, but it helps you relax in the wilderness.
Animal Collective - "Tikwid"
Enunciation is not on top display here either, although words are actually being (de)formed. Plainly pretty at the times when tumbling words won't express what a lush "OoooooH-Ahhh" might, it shuffles gaily. It's devolved easy sunniness almost invents a cultural appropriation project in which Paul Simon embraces the indigineous music of tripping Brooklynites and wins a Grammy. Almost.
// Animal Collective - Back Catalog - BUY
Posted by Jeff Klingman at November 30, 2006 08:50 AM
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