Following last year’s widely acclaimed Sung Tongs album and more than a year of snowballing momentum, Animal Collective return with a new album, their sophmore effort for FatCat, and a truly stunning, inviting, often heart-warming experience. It is everything one could wish it to be, yet it is also simply the natural product of a band growing together, listening to their own feelings without considering their recent success, as they lived in Seattle for a month during recording. Feels is the band’s seventh album to date and, as we have learned to expect the unexpected, it sees them kicking off from their previous release to explore another different direction. Where Sung Tongs was largely acoustic-based and the product of just two members of the Collective (Avey Tare and Panda), Feels is a full group effort (also including Geologist and Deakin). It is electrified, rhythmically more urgent, and overall a considerably denser work. Sweet melodies and big catchy hooks explode overhead and rain smiles upon all within earshot. The songwriting is brave and adventurous as ever, indelibly stamped with their own unique personality. Hugely inventive and tightly focused, Feels simply sounds like nothing else right now. Growing ever more confident and redefining the top of their game, there is quite simply no other group around quite like Animal Collective.
This band makes challenging modern pop – music that defies easy classification or lazy pigeonholing. The mixture of electronics and traditional instrumentation, of songform and soundscape, are integrated brilliantly and totally convincingly into a coherent, logical whole. While some parts can grab you at first listen indeed, goose bumps and all – Feels is a deep work that demands and rewards repeat inspection. Rather than an album that you’ll “get” instantly (though it has that too), Feels is a deep work that demands and rewards repeat inspection each new listen yields fresh information, new surprises. With so much going on within each track, this is a real treat for sound-heads. Bubbling, rippling instrumental playing coheres into fluid song structures that seem to swell and ebb, building a throbbing, shimmering wall of sound. Each song on the album is rippling, layered with intricate activity the melodic / rhythmic skeleton filled in and embroidered with a myriad colours via sampled noises and looped rhythms, little electronic tics and textures, vocal harmonies, tones and drones.
Recorded through April with producer Scott Colbourne (Climax Golden Twins, Sun City Girls) at his Seattle church studio, the album also features significant contributions from violinist Eyvind Kang (Mr. Bungle, Sun City Girls, Arto Lindsay, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn), and pianist Kristin Anna Valtysdottir (Mum, Storsveit Nix Noltes, Mice Parade). Avey Tare’s vocal range seems to have grown by leaps and bounds. Witness the feral hollering of “Grass” or “The Purple Bottle” – onto the candy-kid bawling of “Turn Into Something”, or “Banshee Beat”s beautifully restrained whisper. Wow. And further,this record sees an exploration of the guitar that’s as inventive and controlled as My Bloody Valentine at their peak. Whilst “Flesh Canoe” is perhaps the only track that really recalls that influence directly, the album is irradiated by a swirling web of guitar & piano melodies through shifting perspectives. There also seems to be an African influence lurking in the background cyclic webs of stoccato notes, sprayed in apparent jubilance resounding choruses starting off the day.
Feels is undoubtedly a very varied and beautifully flowing album. Running the gamut of emotions (the album’s title can be taken as a noun as well as a verb) it is by turns melancholic, hypnotic, woozy, overjoyed, introspective, and just plain heart-breakingly beautiful. 3 of the opening 4 tracks blast out an infectious sense of urgency and growing confidence driven by pounding drums and yelping and hollering vocals; “Bees” and “Daffy Duck” are slowglowing sprawls; “Banshee Beat” is as stunning as any other track we’ve heard this year both physically and emotionally it’s deeply affecting – a heartmelting, slow-spreading tingle of a track that demands a foot-shuffling reaction; “Loch Raven” builds around a sparkling jewel of an Aphex-y electronic melody, glistening piano notes, padding drums and vocal interplay; whilst “Turn Into Something” neatly rounds off the album by spanning an arch from high energy exuberance to a low, langorous immersion.
A dazzling ride from start to finish, Feels pushes Animal Collective’s challenging and changing agenda on to the next level, and confirms their place as one of the most ambitious and forward-thinking modern bands.
