Animal Collective: temporary state of blessed haven

We are well trenched in the epoch of mediocrity and the legendary ‘decade taste didn’t bother’ is not even in the kindergarten by comparison. Brave, forward lookers, dreamers and eccentrics are pressed into retreat, everywhere: streets, media, movies, music… Everyone is toeing damn lines frightened of losing position, comfort, fame…

Therefore there are fewer and fewer surprises left in the music world, few ideas not homage’s, chords not repeated ad nauseam… If you are an avid listener of musical output then you know that recycling has been the name of the game for far too long.

Originators, innovators, pioneers are all epithets that are handed around with ease, without any merit and damn casually. [But then, how can an ignoramus recognise a masterpiece?] Morrissey is not the savour regained, Franz Ferdinand ain’t the future of anything, Keane are even more retro… Vicious cycle of gobbledygook.

But then, from time to time, an album appears to gladden one’s hanging about, habitual intoxicating, screwing around and living in general… Animal Collective’s ‘Sung Tongs’ has been bringing a lot of joy into our office for weeks… Gliding in on a Japanese-vibe of the opening ‘Leaf House’, it unlocks another set of [French?] doors of perception.

It gets a slight Word-music-mutated-feel on ‘Who Could Win a Rabbit’, succeeded by an almost pastoral ambient of ‘The Softest Voice’, so wistful Jethro Tull would have prayed for such ‘folk-rock’ in their prime arabesque days, until the track’s supposed-bridge that morphs into a Tangerine Dream lab. Idiosyncratic? You have heard nothing yet - this is with extra range.

Experimenting with musical limitations as well as vocal treatment, Animal Collective provide such an array of songs that classifying them is nigh to impossible. It sounds like a cliché, and it usually is, but this time. Minimalism of ‘Winter’s Love’ is recorded like it was occurring on the next hill… The theme that is further explored on ‘Kids On Holiday’, sounding as if performed at a country fair while domestic animals were running free…

‘Visiting Friends’ are either of the alien kind or tempting to some psychedelic medication as it takes you way beyond the Solar system; it gets even more paranoid on ‘Mouth Wooed Her’, delightfully - we haste to clarify. Animal Collective, thank God, don’t deal in song structures one is bombarded 24/7 but explore the music’s ability to reflect/induce a blessed state, helping along a creation of a haven via a ‘trip’ lasting almost 13 minutes!

This is a broader sonic canvas than we have seen Animal Collective paint on before. To be loved, treasured and kept for life… unlike marriages, according to any man as honest as Brad Pitt.

9/10