Last we heard from them, the members of Animal Collective had decamped to their childhood hometown of Baltimore for Centipede Hz, a dizzying, often impenetrable record that was hard not to hear as a pointed reaction to the immense success of its much-lauded predecessor, Merriweather Post Pavilion.
This time around, the band ditched its tried-and-true practice of touring the new record’s songs ahead of time, opting instead to develop the album together in the studio, drawing influence from early Beatles and the Ramones, and enlisting the help of John Cale and bass saxophonist Colin Stetson. The result is Animal Collective at its tightest, most coherent (no song here even approaches the five-minute mark) and poppiest, even as the band draws on ’60s psych/pop, rudimentary techno and three-chord punk to build on its ever-evolving sound.
—Möhammad Choudhery
