Animal Collective Feels CD

Additional personnel: Eyvind Kang, Kristín Anna Valtysdóttir.
Audio Mixer: Scott Colburn.
Recording information: Gravel Voice, Seattle, WA (03/2005).
While critics found it easy to lump Animal Collective in with the freak folk scene after the strumming madness of Sung Tongs, Feels may cause them to revise their opinions -- slightly. First, this is more of a rock record, especially early on; the frequent cymbal crashes and pounding drums leave little doubt. Second, Feels has less of the aimless meandering of many artists in the freak folk scene. AC can, and do, explode at any second, and their whirl of musical ideas -- mostly naturalistic, such as intricate vocalizing or tribal drumming -- can become dizzying, but gleefully so, not in a disorienting way. (Imagine Fiery Furnaces condensing an entire album down to three minutes and you'll begin to understand the sound of the second song, "Grass.") So, while the folk tag has become less of an issue, freak still applies with no doubt. A core strength of the group is its ability to sound invigorated and bracing when exploring territory often surveyed in the past. Rock music can be a constraining form, especially at this late date, but the group sounds freer than ever before, almost as though they've never bothered with rock in their lives, and have only happened upon a bare few LPs before beginning their recording career. (If so, one of those would have been by Mercury Rev, although Animal Collective are much less patient in building to a climax -- "The Purple Bottle" has at least a dozen of them.) As on Sung Tongs, the first half is active, direct, and punchy -- nearly overloaded with production and ideas -- while the second half explores quiet, abstract moods, often with only a few tremulous vocals accompanied by autoharp. ~ John Bush
Outsider music's crossover cover boys take a giant step towards mainstream accessibility with this album--then jump right over it into the bushes. Having garnered the highest freak honors with their previous album, SUNG TONGS, here they expand from two to four members and take their chirpy call-and-response harmonies to a whole other level, adding a cohesive production that welds all the disparate elements into genuine melodic hooks. The opening track, "Did You See the Words," even has a distinct indie-rock chorus (for a while anyway) in addition to the scattered ivory tinkling and Panda Bear's upper-octave-strained ravings. Not long afterwards they're layering on the war whoops and Beach Boy vocalizing until it all starts rising and falling like the sea, often alongside contrapuntal piano and more robust and full-bodied drum work than previous AC albums. Somehow or other their signature primitivism coalesces into near pop perfection and seldom falters anywhere along its breakneck 52-minute run.Rolling Stone (No. 987, p.133) - 3 out of 5 stars - "...[M]aintains a sense of childlike joy and free-flowing exploration while creating bizarro pastoral reveries out of primitive tom-tom beats, guitar screeches and all kinds of overlapping vocals...."
Spin (p.60) - Ranked #36 in Spin's "40 Best Albums Of 2005" - "[With] falsetto singsong, light-hearted do-do-dos, war-play whoops. Drop your guard and it'll sound something like wisdom."
Entertainment Weekly (No. 845, p.75) - "...[B]reathlessly giddy and shamelessly trippy..." - Grade: A
Magnet (p.87) - "FEELS is layered as no other Collective album before it. Because of this, the instruments melt into a pure sound where melodies and bits of harmonic ideas are left to linger long after they've disappeared."
The Wire (p.51) - "[I]nclusive in its busy, cluttered sound, where everything seems to be happening at once and nothing is left out....[With an] emphasis on accessibility through melody and the conveyance of an almost childlike sense of wonder."
The Wire (p.43) - Included in The Wire's "2005 Rewind: 50 Records Of The Year."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.60) - Ranked #4 in Mojo's "Top Ten Underground Albums Of 2005."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.108) - 4 stars out of 5 - "FEELS is every bit as chaotically charming as its predecessor....By turns playful and upbeat, subdued and drifting..."