The two sides of Animal Collective go on display.
First impressions usually go a very long way.
Live4ever’s introduction to Animal Collective came in the form of a long piece by the much-cherished writer Simon Reynolds published in the middle of the noughties. It’s opening line was: “Animals, anthropomorphism and animalism are common preoccupations in psychedelic music.”
He had us at animals, but the rest of the highly literate wordsmithing projected an image of the Baltimorean quartet as more of an ethereal concept than something as gauche as a band playing music.
We learned that David Portner, Noah Lennox, Brian Weitz and Josh Dibb had met whilst at free-thinking private schools set in the idyllic Maryland countryside; once a thing, the foursome then adopted the alternative handles Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deaken.
All in all, the impression was pretty Syd Barrett-meets-Devendra Banhart stuff but although fascinating, it felt like you might never hear much about them again.
And then in 2009 along came Merriweather Post Pavilion, the quartet’s ninth album and, in a revelatory development, one which had them facing the mainstream head on as opposed to the right angles of the past. It even boasted the stellar, singalong My Girls, a synth pop symphony which was by their unwritten coda a kind of hit.
The years since have seen dissolvable line-ups, film soundtracks, a multitude of solo albums and in 2022 Time Skiffs, a subset of the twenty-track strong batch of material written whilst the foursome were jointly convened in rural Tennessee.
Whilst that was a remote, production-based affair, the shackles of convention were well and truly removed for what makes up Isn’t It Now?, recorded in Brooklyn with co-producer Russell Elevado.
As the previous few lines have conveyed, very few people do conventional shackles off like Animal Collective. Here the nine tracks run to over an hour, skipping perches often and with nil consideration for logical sequencing or the sin of orthodoxy.
Opener Soul Capturer, with its modish sixties’ clip, snaky guitar and retro vocal treatments explores a mood well-trodden by others but approached with more intent here, and even if the tale of self-obsession unravels towards a single noted conclusion, it’s direct enough.
Proceedings split into either tracks which are of a manageable, radio-friendly length – if not always approach – and (much) longer efforts.
The former group share a similar vibe, each possessing elements of retro-psychedelia, blissful sounding melodies and a ghostly talent for evocation; of them (Gem & I, Stride Rite, All The Clubs Are Broken) the latter uses its relative simplicity to most please with the most ease.
Whilst it’s a bit churlish to talk about the actual length of the rest – time is an unreliable meter for art – it’s worth factoring in, if only to communicate the immersive form and sheer scale of the work on offer.
Neither does art need to make sense, and rather than the sound of whale noise or trees falling in a wood, tracks like Genies Open and Magicians From Baltimore steer their own elongated path, but mostly stay on the relatable side of Avant Garde.
The centrepiece though is Defeat’s twenty minutes-plus, which in form weedles through an oddly baroque opening and then spirals off into different, each more cosmic sounding extensions of itself, seemingly a jam that wouldn’t be edited by any man.
Elliptically, Isn’t It Now? sits Animal Collective at both ends of their own creative spectrum, from the boundaryless origins to the later commercial apex.
Never ones for leaving the alternate landscape Simon Reynolds sketched almost twenty years ago, they sound entirely comfortable there and at all points in between, but casual listeners – if there is such a thing at this stage – may want to choose a less maze-like trip to this illusory world.
