Prospect Hummer
It’s the most obviously beautiful thing that Animal Collective has done.
Experimental & Avant-garde
Sung Tongs
Sung Tongs doesn’t connect with all of its experiments, but for the first time Animal Collective is actually fun to listen to.
Here Comes the Indian
It veers between eerie, nonmusical tension and otherworldly sublimity without breaking a sweat. It’s the kind of thing that I don’t think is really possible to come up with in your head and then go out and create. It has to come about via experimentation and iteration.
Danse Manatee
Danse Manatee is interesting as an artifact of the seminal experimental poppers’ early years, but if it wasn’t retroactively attributed to Animal Collective, it would have a (deservedly) small audience.
Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished
It’s kind of like a David Lynch film—at a glance it could pass as an awkward attempt at mimicking a popular analog, but if you peel back its layers, you find it is a creation of an endlessly complex and inspired artist.