When is a band not a band? Perhaps it’s when a loosely affiliated set of musicians assemble as a whole or in random combinations of its individual members, and in those various permutations create sounds that defy accepted genre categorization. Perhaps it’s when the aggregation’s members operate under pseudonyms and build an epic discography that reflects melodic lessons taught by The Beatles over a half century ago while utilizing the studio as a fifth member, somehow sculpting music into sonic artwork that suggests an acid-dosed jamboree of The Flaming Lips, Polyphonic Spree, Brian Eno, Can, Brian Wilson, Pink Floyd and a dozen other influences that were never really influences. Animal Collective is all that and somehow impossibly more.
Childhood friends and products of Baltimore’s progressive school system, Animal Collective’s four members — David Portner (Avey Tare), Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), Josh Dibb (Deakin) and Brian Weitz (Geologist) — indulged in exploratory forays into Pavement-tinged Indie Rock music, then dabbled with psychedelic substances and Krautock, which was followed by experimentalism that was untainted by exposure to previous purveyors of musical weirdness. While all four were enrolled in separate colleges, they reconvened in Baltimore during summers to work on musical projects, the first being Lennox’s solo debut (as Panda Bear). In 2000, the group released its next collaboration, Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, under the banner of Avey Tare and Panda Bear.
After releasing a few more project albums, the band took some industry advice and christened its total unit Animal Collective, taking “Animal” from an early label name and “Collective” for the musicians’ intention to create as an interchangeable team. The group’s first release in this format was 2003’s Here Comes the Indian, a densely textured and exotically appointed album, followed by the stripped-back but equally harmonically beautiful Sung Tongs.
After 2005’s Feels and 2007’s Strawberry Jam, which was cited as Pitchfork’s album of the year, Animal Collective (operating as a trio) recorded 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, the band’s breakthrough that was lauded by Uncut Magazine as “one of the landmark American albums of the century so far” before the album had even been released. In the eight years since Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective has done the visual album ODDSAC, curated All Tomorrow’s Parties, appeared at festivals like Coachella and released two more acclaimed albums, 2012’s Centipede Hz and last year’s Painting With, followed by The Painters EP at the start of 2017.
Animal Collective may well be the most inventive and original American band that doesn’t even narrowly resemble a conventional band.
Click here for tickets/more show details.
