ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: ODDSAC (2010)
1) Mr. Fingers; 2) Kindle
Song; 3) Satin Orb Wash; 4) Green Beans; 5) Screens; 6) Urban Creme; 7)
Working; 8) Tantrum Barb; 9) Lady On The Lake; 10) Fried Camp; 11) Fried Vamp;
12) Mess Your House; 13) What Happened?
Technically, Animal Collective's next project
after Fall Be Kind was not a proper
«album» — it was a joint visual/audio product, with AC providing the music and
director Danny Perez providing the spectral hallucinations on the screen.
Since the whole thing was made in tandem, it might be reasonably asserted that
the music is no good here without the visuals, and that the visuals are
worthless without the music. However, anyone familiar with the whole story of
Animal Collective will immediately realize that the music is not that different
from typical AC so as not to work without the accompanying imagery — and,
personally, having watched several of the psychedelic sequences filmed by
Perez, I can safely state that this is indeed so. If we can listen to, enjoy,
and get inspired by ʽI Am The Walrusʼ and ʽFlyingʼ without necessarily having
to watch the Beatles running around in funny suits on the former or delirious
rainbow coloring of the sky on the latter, we can do the same with ODDSAC (speaking of which, I do have a
suspicion that the experience of Magical
Mystery Tour might have been one of the inspirations here).
So I'm just going to say a few words about ODDSAC (whatever that title deciphers
to — I propose Overblown Demented
Delirious Stories by the Animal
Collective) as a collection of new music, free from any sort of ties to any
sort of visuals. (Besides, with the aid of proper substances, anyone is
probably capable of conjuring one's own
visuals here — why should you feel chained to somebody else's artistic
vision?).
In a way, the whole project might have simply
been a clever ruse. With Merriweather
Post Pavillion and its alarming success that almost (but not quite) put the band on the brink of mainstream
acceptance, they must have felt an acute need to remind the world that they
were, first and foremost, a bunch of musical crazies, not a school of musical
gurus. Listen to ʽMy Girlsʼ and ʽNo More Runnin'ʼ long enough and, who knows,
you might start discerning the meaning of life in their basic structures (just
as your parents did with Pet Sounds
a whole wide world ago). In other words, they got too serious, and the emotionality
in their music got way too similar to
normal human emotionality. One step further and you turn into Radiohead. Two
steps, and you turn into Prodigy. Three steps, and whoah, you're the Backstreet
Boys...
...all right, that was really a joke, but the idea
is clear enough. Hence, a change in direction, slyly motivated by technical
reasons — being interested in adapting the music to a set of modern
post-post-post-impressionist visuals. This gives the AC a good pretext for
turning away from the «normalized» melodicity of Pavillion and for returning to their roots — chaotic psychedelia
with no limits or boundaries. More than half of ODDSAC is closer in spirit to AC's earliest albums, only with much
better production.
A few of the tracks are still made in their
trademark psycho-folk style — with acoustic guitars, sprinkly chimes,
falsettos, criss-crossed vocal harmonies, and a certain sentimental elegance; I
mainly refer to ʽScreensʼ and ʽWorkingʼ here; plus, Beach Boys-like harmonies
additionally crop up from time to time, for instance, on the closing track
(ʽWhat Happened?ʼ). Atmospheric and respecting the legacy of Pavillion, but nowhere near as
memorable as the best stuff on their «mainstream masterpiece», they do an
important job — providing some relief from all the weirdness — but they are not
what ODDSAC is really about.
But what is
it about? Overcrowding, I guess. With all the jungly overdubs, all the
animalistic and totemistic vocalizing tracks, all the tribal beats and nature
sounds, ODDSAC is probably their
best attempt, so far, to emulate the living soul of a parallel universe. Not a
sci-fi universe, mind you, of the kind usually preferred by their colleagues in
the electronic department — quite an organic one, with busy street life (ʽMr.
Fingersʼ), ghosts spooking lonely wanderers in the woods (ʽSatin Orb Washʼ),
collective celebrations on feast days (ʽTantrum Barbʼ), large swamps spewing
out poisonous, hallucinogenic fumes (ʽLady On The Lakeʼ), and whatever else
you'd like to extract from your own mind to substitute Danny Perez's
unnecessary fantasies.
Even the album's lonesome attempt at emulating
an «industrial» mood (ʽUrban Cremeʼ) never attains the icy, mercyless, robotic
cold of, say, Autechre, as the busy, static sonics of functioning equipment are
still accompanied by «organic» sounds. Scary robotic equipment can never be that scary when it is humming, beeping,
and clanging against a background of chirping birds and croaking frogs. Or, to
be more precise, of chirping-croaking frogbirds, because the world of AC is
full of non-trivial species whose evolution path followed the same individual
mutations as the brain cells of Avey Tare and Panda Bear.
What makes this stuff better than, for
instance, Here Comes The Indian
(this early AC release is probably the closest in spirit to ODDSAC) is — apart from extra
complexity, improved production, and shorter length of the individual tracks,
all of which helps — the fact that in between the two, there was Merriweather Post Pavillion, a
demarcation line, having crossed which the band could never really be the same
again. Yes, they are making a different album here, but they are not fascistic
purists, and they retain all the gained experience, and this concerns not just
the lovely vocal harmonies, but also the use of «light» electronic tones —
chiming, jingling, sprinkling, such as the sonic kaleidoscope of ʽMess Your
Houseʼ, a track that is way too chaotic to fully match my tastes, but still
sounds bright and optimistic, even despite all the jarring explosions and
screams with which it is bombarded on a regular basis.
My only — minor, but real — disappointment is
that, to a large extent, all of this stuff is somehow «nostalgic». It's as if
they have grown up, matured, learned a lot, and now are returning back to base
to «do it all over again» from scratch, so that you can now throw away all of
their pre-Sung Tongs records and
replace them with ODDSAC. But then
again, who am I to complain?... seeing as how I am pretty much doing the same
thing with my own reviews. Thumbs up, that much at least is for certain.
I've watched the movie twice and while it's mostly a neat watch, I agree that it doesn't add anything major to the music. At best it works as cool music videos, and at worst it somewhat detracts from the songs (I find all the spiralling psychedelic imagery really distracting). I kind of feel the whole movie thing was yet another attempt by the band at separating themselves from the audience. I have to give them credit for finding a way to followup their most successful album to date with something that went completely under the radar. Most websites and comments on ODDSAC reviewed it as a film and not as an album. And many casual Animal Collective fans still don't even know this exists! But it's their loss really since this album is great. Ditch the visuals and it plays out like everything the band wanted to be in their early days but couldn't quite figure out yet.
ReplyDeleteThe nostalgic feeling you're getting is understandable, for the first time ever the band is looking back instead of ahead, but there is a good reason for that. Apparently this album was recorded over a much longer span of time than any of their other records including some sessions dating as far back as the Feels era. So it kind of plays out like several eras of the band all mushed together, which I think is pretty neat.
Anyway, the songwriting is strong (Mr. Fingers, Tantrum Barb, Screens, and What Happened have become some of my favourite AnCo tunes) and the soundscapey stuff is highly engaging. So another winner for Animal Collective!