Animal Collective
Antone’s, May 27
Animal Collective made a sold-out crowd at Antone’s feel like a rave for about five minutes. Kind of a weird feeling, but so is Animal Collective’s music, an unclassifiable yet aurally engaging spawn that shape-shifts with every album. Opener Sir Richard Bishop’s solo guitar performance silenced the mostly under-21 crowd, many of whom likely don’t know of his mind-frying work with the Sun City Girls, but he brought some of that back with his chaotic, fingernail-ripping strum. Animal Collective’s lineup was missing guitarist Deakin, which stripped the band’s heavily layered sound of one rather integral part, but it also allowed for them to debut material from the upcoming Strawberry Jam, recorded in the Arizona desert, plus even newer songs. They’ve kept the exploding, tandem yelps of Panda Bear, who abandoned a drum kit for processed beats, and the screams of Avey Tare. One unnamed song had an almost a cappella vibe; another floated in lazy waves of cymbal crash over the crowd. The Jam will be sticky indeed. Sadly, only one song from 2005’s Feels was doled out; even sadder, it wasn’t “Grass.” They also got down with the way-back-when, diving into Sung Tongs‘ “Who Could Win a Rabbit” early in the set, making it sound less like cosmic Beach Boys and more like a tribal, bass-in-your-face house cut. At the end of the night, with no encore, the performance felt a little sluggish, not the primal scream therapy they’ve been known to indulge, more of a test run than anything. Incidentally, the band’s “Sweet Road” was chosen for a recent Crayola marker campaign, and it’s hard not to envision a whole new generation of kids sniffing them.
This article appears in June 1 • 2007.