Music
Animal Collective
Feels (Fat Cat)by Andy Beta
“Now it is only by rare accidents of spiritual regression that poets make their lines magically potent in the ancient sense.” —Robert Graves, The White Goddess
Photo: Robin Laananen
It’s hard to talk about the Animal Collective without bringing up Peter Pan. Reviews of the group’s early records referenced children’s books, bedwetting, infantile regression and boys yelping in the woods, to name but a few examples of how writers have evoked that eternal boy-dom. The breakout success of last year’s Sung Tongs, though, signaled a shift. Not that an expanded audience with increased expectations changed the way these four high school friends (Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakin) summon their unique sound; serious relationships, marriage and fatherhood did.
Amid the throaty gurgles and tremolo guitar that open “Did You See the Words,” the first thing you’ll notice about Feels, the Animal Collective’s most vibrant record yet, is that singer Avey Tare’s vocals can be deciphered. Perhaps not fully comprehended, but he enunciates whereas before he mumbled and masked his voice. As the group said in an old interview, they once perceived their vocals as just another musical texture and distorted them accordingly. Such vagueness and mischief might work among boys at play, but not so much with their respective mates or spouses, with whom feelings have to be conveyed and desires expressed. Call it looking through a glass darkly, where they have put their childish things away.
Sonically, Feels is assured as ever; producer Scott Colburn warms and clarifies AC’s music while allowing it to retain its campfire-like flicker. Shadows dance around the songs as the playing drifts from plangent pop to something more pastoral and diffuse. But whether it’s the glissades of autoharp and cooing in “Bees” or the pixie swirls and echoing breaths in “Loch Raven,” the band affect these atmospherics while retaining their music’s tactile, emotional core.
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Aside from the shock of crisp elocution, a profusion of verbiage pours forth on Feels. Avey Tare and Panda Bear could barely get out a verse on Sung Tongs before veering off into abstract chants and gibberish. Here, words flow like rain, the images amassing into a stunning whole; there might be more lines on “Banshee Boat” than on the group’s last two albums combined. It’s a gushing akin to the thrill of new love, when you can’t help writing poems and singing sappy songs.
Allusions to someone who’s beloved appear throughout the album. She’s the girl in the giddy “Purple Bottle” who “drink[s] with horses and knows her Chinese ballet.” She’s also the one who lays beside Avey Tare on “Flesh Canoe” when he asks, “Are there more important things to do than kiss or sleep?” And the one who messes with his sleeping patterns and pushes him to the ground on “Grass,” and he couldn’t be happier about it. Indeed, Avey Tare’s girlfriend, Kristin Valtysdottir, plays piano on the track.
The presence of Valtysdottir, who is classically trained, brings about change in the band, her chiming chords clarifying their din. Although merely hinted at in “Daffy Duck,” this metamorphosis becomes explicit in the album’s sumptuous closer, “Turn Into Something.” Here, the Collective’s galloping pop slows to a stop before becoming something ambient and exquisite. Any semblance of structure melts away to reveal an effervescent sound that neatly creates in listeners the sensation of tinkerbell dust.