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Live Review: Animal Collective, Daniel Higgs @ the Ottobar (2009.05.09)

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MP3: Animal Collective – Who Could Win A Rabbit

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MP3: Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes

Animal Collective’s cult-like status was built on elements like their masked press photos and indecipherable lyrics, but the stuff of legend was found in their live performances. For all previous tours, the trio would use their live shows to preview tracks from upcoming releases…which is why anybody who saw them tour off of Strawberry Jam probably heard “My Girls” before it was remixed by a thousand DJs. Furthermore, interviews with the band revealed that not only had they lost or destroyed the samples of a lot of their older material…but that they’d actually forgotten the words to some of their fans’ favorite songs. So, if you really liked that one song off of Sung Tongs and couldn’t wait to see it live…you’d probably have to keep waiting.

Yet, based on their performance Sunday night, Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Geologist appear to have thrown some of this dogma out of the window. Read the rest…

Album Review: Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)

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I remember the days when Animal Collective would whirl me along in their otherworldly tornado when I put my headphones on. Remember “Leaf House”? Those two-and-a-half minutes of perfection? I do.

And “The Purple Bottle”? The formless wonder-pop of Feels? Remember when Avey Tare and Panda Bear would bedazzle you with lyrics that seemed like a task to decipher? I remember.

If Merriweather Post Pavilion is any indication of the Baltimore natives’ future aspirations, those days of unconventional song structure and general madness are long gone. On Merriweather, Animal Collective offer us their most predictable album yet; but rather than disappointing, they place a very necessary lid on the bottle of joy that they’ve been pouring out consistently since they started making music way back in high school. Read the rest…