OH SHIT! I'm seeing Animal Collective tomorrow.
Painting With Animal Collective
I have spent hours on hours with Animal Collective’s
Painting With in the past two weeks since it came out. I think I’ve read pretty much every interview, as well as lots of reviews and AC message board posts. In nerdy fangirl fashion, I’ve been keeping notes. So, I figured I would turn my stoned scribblings into a readable document in case there any other Animals out there who are as excited about it as I am. This is a mix of my own thoughts/feelings/reactions/interpretations of the songs, as well as things the band or other fans have said about it.
There’s been a fair amount of negative reaction to the album. Some fans say it’s too much of a departure from their older sounds. That never makes sense to me, since the only thing you can expect when there’s a new AC album is that it’s going to sound totally different than the one before it. Others say it’s lacking emotional depth and missing the “magic”. When asked, the band said that out of the sixteen years they’ve been making music together, this album was their most pleasant recording process and they wrote it in the most content period of their lives. These guys are closer to forty than they are to thirty. Geo and PB are family men with wives and children. But that doesn’t mean they are devoid of inspiration, it was a conscious decision to make an album that looked outward rather than inwards. Gone are the strep-throat inducing screamy jams and heartbreaking breakup anthems (Avey Tare mentioned Banshee Beat is a song he just can’t play live anymore bc he has outgrown those feelings) but there’s depth in the themes and topics they explore: environmentalism, borders/conflict, feminism/gender roles, etc.
Painting With could not be a more appropriate title. This album is synesthetic with a vibrant sound palette. The disjointed, collaged and at times bizarre melding and mashing of sounds parallels art from the (Flori)Dada or Cubist movements, both express confounding ideas using experimental techniques. These are traditional pop-songs that got jumbled up in the Animal Collective weirdo-machine and they came out skewed in this new and fresh way. These are the shortest, most hi-def jams they’ve ever written and while the album flashes past you in the blink of an eye, there is still so much going on. The ever-present undercurrent of childlike wonder is still here- it’s bouncy, dizzying and fun! All the sonic manipulation and vocal acrobatics really gives you the vibe that they were having a lot of fun experimenting in the studio. My top two Avey jams are “On Delay” and “The Burglars”. My top two Panda jams are “Hocus Pocus” and “Recycling”.
I have included some of my favorite lines/verses from each song in the write up but I strongly recommend taking a listen to the album with the full set of lyrics in front of you:
lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Animal_Collective:Painting_With_%282016%29FloriDada (Avey)- There are couple tongue in cheek moments on the album, starting with the opening track which has a bridge about bridges: “Where’s the bridge that’s gonna take me home?-- A bridge that someone’s fighting over--A bridge that someone’s paying for-- A bridge so old, so let it go.” The title is a nod to the Dada Art Movement. Avey Tare overheard a radio segment making fun of the “crazy people” in Florida and it bummed him out. This song is a critique on the divisive nature of borders, be it state lines or country lines. Tare writes about a fantastical ‘everywhere place’ where borders don’t exist:
“…Raise me a thumb / from human skin
That isn’t judged by / where it begins
Show me the clams / show me the pearls
Mail me a note / sent from a world
That isn’t so far / and always right here
Where all the boundaries / have disappeared”
“…I found myself there a collagin’ with all of the human race
A dancer from Ghana / smiling in Tijuana
A Frankenstein java, with touches of Prada, and corn on the plates
A smear of gardenia / in the fair hair of Sweden
And maybe I actually visited some sort of mythical place
Or was it a future / connected by sutures
Oh let’s go get lost in the image I made of the everywhere place
I see the lads from Osaka / dyed in FloriDada…”*
Hocus Pocus (PB)- The theme/critique of borders continues on Hocus Pocus with the opening lines, “so many ways to wade beyond the lines that border us”. This jam is aptly named, with a bent and warped tempo that is spellbinding and disorienting. Avey Tare and Panda Bear show off their complex harmonies with unique “shadow vocals” and trade-off syllables on a syncopated beat. Meanwhile, Geologist provides a swirling background placing you inside of an 8-bit video game on acid. Way into the lyrics on this track, the band is woke:
“…behind the drape, an agent
behind him aims, a grave arrangement
stuck in the slime, no paddle
guarded lives, don’t tend to dabble
legalize this principle ( pitch change here makes me happy)
jump into a spot not visible
bring it closer to the middle
what’s so right with control?
what’s left but-
wander from the cynical
take a look at views atypical
with an answer to the riddle
as a tightening grip, just when it starts to let go…”Vertical (Avey)-. The first 30 seconds of this jam reminds me of a Ween song. Tare drew inspiration from his fear of heights and tendency to experience vertigo,
“Mountains in Kauai/ Make me feel so lowly/ Cower at their power/Vertical I like/ Dizzy under buildings/ Bending at their willing/ Is it what I’m seeing/ Vertical is fright/ Hard to gain perspective/ Often it’s perplexing/ Reaching for a record/ Vertical is sight.” Environmentalism is another central theme of the album, there is mention of humans constantly “building up” and how that can be detrimental as it blocks out nature—
“People live above you, postured like a totem”. However, on the flip side, “building up” can also be seen as a function of nature, the comparison being drawn with the lyric-
“A tree we are with leaves extending to the sun”. The theme of environmentalism emerged as well as a possible reference to global warming:
“Did you hear the child say? My feet can’t cross the parking lot, the parking lot is way too hot.” That lyric is followed by a chant (wherein the notes appropriately climb up the vertical scale)
“for me, for me, for me” almost like an inverse of the cascading
“just you, just you, just you, just you” in MPP’s ‘Summertime Clothes’.
Lying in the Grass (PB)- To appreciate the true complexity of the vocals on this track, you need to hear it with the lyrics in front of you. Content-wise they aren’t even my favorite lyrics on the album but the alternating syllables and cascading echoes must have been a daunting task to accomplish, I am very curious and excited to see the execution of this technique live. Panda Bear has been a resident of Portugal for several years now and this is the first time the language has made its way onto an Animal Collective track,
“not a shame to say the instincts there, but a virtue to deny the bait. Know the cause and move to gauze, and deftly tratar o sangue (clean up the blood)”. Geologist is showing off with his bleeps and bloops on this one.
*The Burglars (Avey)- This song travels at the speed of light. The band was asked to identify which albums they were listening to during the writing/recording process and Kendrick Lamar’s T.P.A.B. was mentioned many times, at first I didn’t hear the influence until I heard the speed of the vocals in this track. ‘The Burglars’ highlights the materialism of humans and how scared we are of our things being taken, “When I was young we used to put alarms on our doors and screens like a burglar net/ now that I’m older I’m sure that’s absurd/ that’s the word for the man who collects/ who’s he stealing from next?” It also touches on how we react so aggressively/violently to our things being taken,
“I didn’t catch his name *pow* shot him on the range *yow* cause he was a burglar”. Panda Bear: “When Dave sent me the demo of ‘The Burglars’ I just threw up my hands, like ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do with this one’. There’s like seven different changes in it, and it’s [only] two and a half minutes long. There’s no breath; it just rips the whole time.” Apparently, in time, Panda figured out what to do with this song… it’s got that classic Panda Bear skitter of a beat and his background vocals are so beautiful, really flexing his voice on those high notes,
“What you think Yooouuu Own, You DooOOnn’t”. Natural Selection (PB)- “Techno Ramones” was one of the descriptors the boys were using as they created the album—that makes the most sense to me on this track in particular, especially in the percussion. This jam sounds like They Might Be Giants which makes sense because PB said “Flood!’ was the first album he ever purchased with his own money. This track took several listens to digest, on first listen it practically gives you whiplash. But now it’s one of my most anticipated live jams and one of my favorite lines on the album with its question-everything mentality:
“It's best this mess is part of the plan/ The truth is moving under the ground/ You're sure the steering wheel/ Is resting in your hands?” AND “The path is written before the act/ A mode of growing seems like a choice/ It feels like progress is a product of a hidden game/ Tough to say/ What obeys? Sneaky Ways”.Bagels in Kiev (Avey)- True Story: Avey Tare’s grandfather immigrated to the US from Kiev by way of Ellis Island. They were a family of bakers and his grandfather invented the machine that punches the whole through the dough of a bagel. Being somewhat desperate for cash, his grandfather sold the design to a corporation for almost nothing. For a track written with your grandpa in mind, the groove sure is seductive. The recurring theme/critique of borders or nationalism comes round again on this track (
“Have you since found some peace? It seems we can’t escape all the war and violence. These days I’m not so sure of who is getting along, or if they were before"). And maybe a reference to Socialism? (
“Bagels for everyone, that’s the kind of thing you would have wanted. There should be lots to eat, how else could they expect to get a tiring job done?”)**Bagels In Kiev INTO On Delay is a classic Avey Tare right-left hook ala For Reverend Green INTO Fireworks on Strawberry Jam
*On Delay (Avey) - Virtually every lyric on this song is some kind of ode to the delay. There are lines that celebrate the delay pedal quite literally as well as other more subtle/clever references to delays, like a rain delay at a baseball game. The funny (and maybe intentionally ironic) thing about the praising of the delay pedal is the fact that this album has relatively little use of it because they’ve replicated the delay effect organically with their vocal hocketing/echoing/shadowing technique. If I had to pick just one, this has to be my favorite track. It just seems to highlight the strengths of all three dudes and they compliment each other in a really beautiful way on this seamless collaboration. This one feels the most like a classic Animal Collective jam.
Gonna include all of the lyrics on this one:I hear it doubly clear (PB & AT hit this opening line simultaneously and in perfect harmony, gave me goosepoops the first time I heard it, probably the prettiest moment on the album)
There’s a doubled exposure/ just waiting to happen/ I’m sitting and fading/ rain tapping together
Two licks of the dog bone/ me slipping through belt loops/ you runnin ahead of/ the sound coming after
I hear it doubly clear
two mannequins in the window suit up like twins on day one
loud harks in the grandest canyon ( an echo, a natural delay?)
Natural slap/ the world back at ya / it’s placing the mirror/ and you will hear her
Throw two hacks attempting to chip it
return of the bat crack in a place called Camden ( Referencing a rain delay at an Baltimore Orioles game? And/or describing the way the sound of the “bat crack” travels around the stands at Camden Yards?)
On delay/ two of us together
On delay/ the sweet of the double
On delay/ me right behind you
On delay/ my steps will follow
On delay/ two eyes that appeared there
You saw them both times
On delay/ looking at reflections
And you were one of them
And it was so nice
And it happened twice
A place that’s thrice best leading me into a feedback zone
in which I lose time I’m finding new rhythms to hold on
So turned on by the delay
So turned on by the delay ( the way the tempo change curves and spirals down here is one of my favorite moments on the album. It also reminds me of the effect that is used on the Tears for Fears lyric “funny how, tiiime, fliiiies” in ‘Head Over Heels’)
Spilling Guts (PB)- A short and punchy little jam. I actually couldn’t even hear half the layers that Geo is laying down in the backtrack until I heard it on vinyl. Really digging the marimba on this one too.
Summing the Wretch (PB)- This jam sounds like PBVSGR B-side mixed with that kids song “skidamarink” I love the way the song unravels in the last 30 seconds. The lyrics kinda make it sound like it’s got something to do with how relationships evolve: “Watch it, watch you, watching wretch/ Plugged into a people patch/ Watch as bonds that illustrate/ Also start to complicate”. The theme of temptation reappears here as it so often does on PB’s solo albums:
“Feel a surge and make a steal/ No one round to see the deed/ Surge so strong it's tough to tame/ Urges lead with none to blame”.Golden Gal (Avey)- Mr. Tare said he had been wanting to write a jam about gender roles for a long time had a hard time finding an angle. His romantic partners have typically been musicians as well and he has witnessed harsh discrimination and sexual objectification of ladies in the music industry: (“You think the gal should feel so comfortable these days/ But sex and gender brings some troubles to the fray/ And trouble tears apart/ another golden heart”). One of his lady friends told him how the TV show Golden Girls was really important to her because it was subversive in that it had mainstream popularity but was about four older ladies—and that is the inspiration behind the sample of Bea Arthur that opens the track and as well as the first verse: (“Golden gal on her screen/ Some kind of tube she’d never seen/ Gift to the girl whose ready to dream/hope in new forms/ The elderly B / Spirit is burnin’/ To hear it for the girls again”). The back half of the song is my favorite, seems to be celebrating the thins he learned from women in his life:
“You’d think the gals should feel so comfortable these days
But sex and gender brings some troubles to the fray
And trouble tears apart another golden heart
So I want to be the reminder that she's stronger than the bulk on other days.
Golden gal, gave me my strength/ she said I’ll be here for you later boy/ now run along, you have to fall.
Golden gal, gave me my faith/ and all it took was some belief/ don’t believe that she should change at all.
Golden gal, taught me restraint/ she said, “you’ll want me more much later, dude./ I’m your everything and not your toy.”
Golden gal, I’ll be beside her/ I might want to stand in line/ to find the kind of mind she can provide.
Here for a while, I will follow my golden gal.”*
Recycling (PB)- This song feels like a little ball of sound circling around in your head. It’s drippy and droney—really reminds me of ‘Acid Wash’ from PBVSGR (‘rope’, ‘ship’ and ‘deep’ come up in both songs too). The interweaving melodies are so beautiful that I didn’t realize how heavy the lyrics were at first. PB has written many songs about his experiences with clinical depression. This is the counter-response to anyone who feels like this album is missing emotional depth, it’s pretty heartbreaking. However, when I asked what the song is called “Recycling” (in the AMA) Panda Bear said, “Recycling is about being a creative person and about making things that are shared with others...I suppose it’s about being a band as well...I was thinking a lot about the comings and goings of things and noticing patterns and cycles, so that title came from that.” So, maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with depression, some of the verses seem pretty clear though:
“Don't care whether this ship sails or sinks into the meat
Don't know if a lesson matters less than what's to eat
While you got it, you figure
Why not launch off of the very highest rope?”
“…When you're rotten, you figure
Why not stick up for the very finest dope?
Don't care if a lesion's clotting up or ceases to bleed
Don't know if a lesson is a pleasure or a need
While you're huffing, you figure
Why not soak up all the craze instead of cope?”