They Call me 'Dances With Pandas'
by Alex V. Cook, Music Editor
first published: October, 2005
first published: October, 2005
like looking up to the sun through the trees from a passing car
Animal Collective
Feels
(Paw Tracks)
What is experience? Is it the our queer bags of flesh sloshing through varying degrees of water vapor and solidity in search of other bags of flesh with which to kill or eat or couple and make bouncy bouncy happiness? Is it the mind's perpetual game of Stratego with The Creator, one that we will never win because The Creator cheats? Or are the Darwinists right and our existence is a crap shoot of cosmic proportions and we are one bad roll away from having become some other configuration - say a tulip or a quasar? Are these questions the nature of existence itself, and that existence is not a noun but a verb? I was once a college sophomore and was equipped to attempt filling in these blanks, but my Quixote days are long past me . Instead, I'm rather content to be along for the ride, escorting the Buddha on his daily jog, protecting him from any undue demise because that would mean I'd hit the end of my road, finding enlightenment in death, or something like that. Experience is not a tidy little clockwork, its a tangly organic mess, forming patternless patterns by just doin its thing, man.
I will not pretend to speak for the Brooklyn techno-hippie Animal Collective members that go by the monikers of Avery Tare, The Geologist or Panda Bear (because we can barely describe our own experiences, much less those of others), but I suspect these cats see the world through a similarly fractured lens. The shimmering, stuttering wondrous music this group presents on earlier releases and hereon their current album Feels, points to this. Tare's vocals, whispery and hazy, drift on the wind, sometimes with a breeze like on the sublimely wavering drone of "Daffy Duck" or as a gale force of Life Power like on the wild "Purple Bottle," the best recontextualization of marching band dynamics since Tusk. The album opens with "Did You See The Words" which finds the group in full throated pop mode, and they sound downright playfully dangerous on "Grass." The thing I love about this group is how wild they sound, not just by the inclusion of natural sounds, and groovy post Beach Boys harmonies, but by how gleefully unhinged they can be. Its like they are out in the yard spinning as fast as they can until they collapse.
And their collapse is equally spectacular. "Flesh Canoe" gets you cascading down the cliffs of Sleep. Its what I imagine an out of body experience might sound. On their heavily tremoloed and reverbed production style, you think you can hear the exact instrumentation, but then the deeper you dig, the more you, uh, unearth. While I think this album doesn't have the same consistency than the near-perfect Sung Tongs of last year, or their EP with was-then-is-now it-woman Vashti Bunyan earlier this year, this may be a better, more exciting record. The harmonies are more dense and convoluted and frankly prettier here, particularly the fugue state engaged in the middle section of "Purple Bottle." The track most lovely on this record is "Banshee Beat" which just shakes and twinkles around Tare's cracking falsetto, like looking up to the sun through the trees from a passing car. It picks me up by my feet and swings me around and lets go, tossing me into the open maw or eternity. The latter half of this record has such a sedative effect to it that the finally carnival-ride-off-its-moorings "Turn Into Something" knocks you awake again with its sheer amok wonder. And I'm not saying that Animal Collective has somehow transcended from becoming Nirvana to achieving that original Nirvana with the virgins and the gold and the rainbows of happiness and all, but the physical shiver and distance in their work might just give you a taste of what enlightenment and true experience might feel like.
Alex V. Cook
Music Editor
Alex V. Cook listens to everything and writes about most of it. His latest book, the snappily titled Louisiana Saturday Night: Looking for a Good Time in South Louisiana's Juke Joints, Honky-Tonks, and Dance Halls
about Alex V. Cook »»
FREE TICKETS for OUTSIDELEFT's QUIET NIGHT OUT
featuring RM FRANCIS, KERRY HADLEY-PRYCE, JAY LEWIS, WAYNE DEAN-RICHARDS and WOODENHAND»»
like looking up to the sun through the trees from a passing car
the weekly guide to new releases
10 clickable things
☉ Denim ☉
Why a portrait artist from Ireland started making comics about U.S. police brutality ☉
Warner Bros Prop Archive ☉
Hollyweed Sign ☉
What can elephants, birds, and flamenco players teach a neuroscientist-composer about music? ☉
BOYCOTT University Challenge ☉
Bruce's Beach. Reparations really, or what? (NYT) ☉
Drag Shows are banned ☉
QPR: Promotion push to relegation fight, 474,000 a week losses and a rescue mission ☉
How to talk like a Chelsea coach ☉
RECENT STORIES
Adventures in the archives
RANDOM READS
What Readers are Reading Right Now
- Lost In Room
Outsideleft talks to original punk pioneer Mark Perry about the upcoming book on the early years of Alternative TV, hardback homicide, the curse of nostalgia, and Crass cufflinks. - Week in Los Angeles City of Death Music
We're hearing from... Swans, Def Leppard, Apache Rose, Jaz Coleman and Anne Dudley, TEKE::TEKE , African Head Charge, Mike Oldfield, Brian Krumm, Alibhe McDonagh with the RTE Concert Orchestra, Belle Scar, Pale Jay, Tinariwen, Tommy Drinkard, RVG, Teardrop Explodes, High Pulp, The Fierce and The Dead, Magnetic Skies, Ebi Soda, Ash Walker - Cease and Resist
Alan Rider talks to Chris Low of the Apostles about Crass, becoming an anarchist punk at 11, and breaking down musical barriers - Outsideleft Week in Music: The Inner Space Sounds from Way Out!
We're hearing from... Inner Space Quartet, Kid brunswick, Erland Cooper, Suicide, Josienne Clarke, 3l3d3p, Seerr, Creep Show, Hannah Peel, Foo Fighters, Tanlines, The Holy Family, Little Dragon, Eduard Artemiev, Oleg Buloshkin, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke, Squid, ABC, NOIR, Joe Perry & Henge - In A Landscape
The continuing journey of Craven Faults - Many Happy Returns
ABC revisit their audacious pop masterpiece. - Track by Track: Dakota Jones' Heartbreakers Space Club
Brooklyn's Brightest Lights in Outer Space - This House
Another downpayment from Wayne Dean-Richards' It's a Mad World But Funny - Songs of Solitude and Singularity
Josienne Clarke's remarkable songbook, revisited - The Sunday Poet: Philip Larkin
Jay gets ready for the Spring Bank Holiday with a poetry reading
All About and Contributors
HELP OUTSIDELEFT
Outsideleft exists on a precarious no budget budget. We are interested in hearing from deep and deeper pocket types willing to underwrite our cultural vulture activity. We're not so interested in plastering your product all over our stories, but something more subtle and dignified for all parties concerned. Contact us and let's talk. [HELP OUTSIDELEFT]
WRITE FOR OUTSIDELEFT
If Outsideleft had arms they would always be wide open and welcoming to new writers and new ideas. If you've got something to say, something a small dank corner of the world needs to know about, a poem to publish, a book review, a short story, if you love music or the arts or anything else, write something about it and send it along. Of course we don't have anything as conformist as a budget here. But we'd love to see what you can do. Write for Outsideleft, do. [SUBMISSIONS FORM HERE]
WRITERS thru' the Years
Agata Makiela, Alan Devey, Alan Rider, Alex V. Cook, Ancient Champion, Andy Allison, Annemiek, Belle Plankton, Bruce Bailey, Caiomhin Millar, Chantal, Cheiron Coelho, Chris Connolly, Christian Present, Damon Hayhurst, Dan Breen, David Hackney, Denni Boyd, Dirty Lillie, DJ Fuzzyfelt, Dr. Rich, Dr. Richard Bennett, Duncan Jones, Erin, Erin Pipes, Erin Scott, Gracey Babs, Graham Baker, Guilaine Arts, H.xx, Hamilton High, Henderson Downing, Holly Martins, J. Charreaux, Jay Lewis, Jaycentee, Jennifer Lynn, Jenny McCann, Jeremy Gluck, Jez Collins, Joe Ambrose, John Robinson, Julie O, Karl Morgan, Katherine Pargeter, Kelsey Osgood, Kevin McHugh, Lake, Lee Paul, Luke Skinner, Malcolm, Marek Pytel, Mark Piggott, Meave Haughey, Michelle Williams, Mike Fox, mindy strouse, Neil Campbell, Neil Scott, Ogglypoogly, OL House Writer, Pam, Paul Hawkins, Paul Quigley, Peter Williams, Pixie McMowat, Pixievic, Rene Williams, Rick Casson, Ronan Crinion, Ruby Lake, Ryan 'RJO' Stewart, Samantha Charles, Seth Sherwood, Shane O'Reilly, Sheridan Coyle, Sofia Ribeiro Willcox, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Spanish Pantalones, Speedie John, Spencer Kansa, Steve McCarthy, The Conversation, Tim London, Tim Sparks, Toon Traveller, Wayne Dean-Richards, and founders, Alarcon & LamontpaulWEEK IN MUSIC
OUTSIDELEFT UNIVERSE
outsideleft content is not for everyone