When a band’s members dress up as animals and adopt aliases like Panda Bear, terms like “pop” and “accessible” become relative at best and useless at worst. Having explored nearly all the drugged-out sonic possibilities of cluttered noise collages and free-form acoustic folk, Animal Collective is finally content with fully expressing its love of forests instead of trying new ideas. With the newly-released Feels, Animal Collective has managed to synthesize the seemingly disparate concepts of their past records into a tighter, easy-to-swallow package, its most accessible to date.
To accomplish this feat, the band employed the talents of members Deaken and Geologist, who were absent from last year’s Sung Tongs. Consequently, Feels has a denser feel than its predecessor, benefiting from added electric guitar and tape loop effects.
Feels opens with its two most immediately appealing songs: “Did You See The Words” begins with thumping tribal drums that provide a foundation for Avey Tare and Panda Bear to freely harmonize their “oohs” and “aahs” over Geologist’s electronic manipulations and bizarre samples of laughing children. Panda Bear’s pounding becomes louder and more primal in the first single, “Grass,” as the band alternates between carefree, deranged pop melodies and bestial screams.
However, Feels offers more than just Ritalin-induced folk freak-outs. “Bees” ebbs and flows with the consistency of the tide as shimmering electric guitar and tinkling piano rise and fall with Panda Bear’s resounding, Gregorian-chant-like croons. The album closes energetically with “Turn Into Something,” a rollicking chant that morphs into a stew of organ and vocal reverberation. Feels is a reverent, occasionally nightmarish ode to bubbling creeks, gnarled branches and rotting leaves, and makes the band’s vision more comprehensible than ever.
