“My body’s moving but the world feels numb.”
Animal Collective are back with one of the most retardedly catchy songs I’ve heard in a while. You hate to tap your foot and bob your head too much, because, after all, the chorus has like ten lyrics total repeated ad nauseum. But it does stick in the noggin pretty easily. The gargantuan EP (4 songs totalling 34 minutes)—basically an album—was thrown together from improvisations of 2019 and early 2020, then mixed and collaged together during the quarantine forced upon the world by COVID-19. It’s a slightly new form for the band, and enough of the new elements jell together in compelling fashion that I’m anxious to hear how their next full-length album turns out.
Emerging from these meandering tracks are experiments with echo, hypnotic droning synths, explorations of static, animal noises, tropical drum beats, surf rock guitar plucking, and the standard-for-AnCo glitches, beeps, and yelps. I found that while each song had something unique to offer, each song also slightly outstayed its welcome. The shortest one is over seven minutes, yet none of them do enough different things to really justify their lengths, save perhaps the title track—a long, tasty jam with a very similar vibe to prime LCD Soundsystem.
But this music, stripped of the grandiosity required when “the band that made Merriweather Post Pavilion” releases something new, finds the band looser and more playful and their experiments tend toward success. On some of their recent studio output, they’ve stumbled by trying to replicate a sound too similar to their previous formula and the results have sounded forced. Here though, with low stakes and a restrained sonic palette forced on them by the quarantine life, they sound like they’re having fun again.
On par with their past outings, the lyrics make no sense at all. Highlight ‘Piggy Knows’—briefly described above—could be about U.S. President Donald Trump, but who really knows. I don’t think I’ve ever really cared that Panda Bear and Avey Tare make little sense when they sing. It’s the lyrical impressions and quality of voice that matter. So instead of scratching my head at lyrics like “jam with the raindrop while the cat makes a box,” I can latch onto the repeated mantra of “and the rain suddenly is gone again,” which has a better takeaway than a line-by-line analysis would give us.
I’m certainly happy that this exists, but I’m not quite ready to claim it’s a herald of the next great Animal Collective album—too many critics have already done that with every release since MPP. I’m just excited that a great band released a great EP and I’ll take it on its own terms.
Favorite Tracks: Piggy Knows; Bridge to Quiet.