You know its filler because its pretty blatant. Filler is a song that does not add (and usually takes away) from the experience of the overall album.

It's not a bridging track between one song to the next, it doesn't conclude nor introduce a track or its redundant to the theme of the album.

If Faaip De Oiad and Viginti Trees aren't filler I don't know what is. Tool are pretty notorious about trying to fill out albums with worthless songs; they structured Lateralus to fill up the CD completely.

Filler is songs that do not contribute to the message or mood the album is trying to convey in any sort of constructive way whatsoever. With this in mind, albums that lack a message or mood are all filler and no killer

I'd say every Animal Collective album is at least 30% filler.

^ even strawberry jam?

If there is an exception to that statement SJ would be it, but it's not completely innocent.

I'm pretty much with Roygbiv. When I describe a filler, I mean a mediocre song that may be safely skipped when you listen to an album. Most likely, it adds nothing new. It's not bad (then I'd call it that), but it would be better if there was a really good song in it's place, so overall they are usually not good on an album unless most of the other songs are even worse.

Filler is any song on an album that does not go with the general flow or is just bad. Or both. So as a result many popular artist's albums are full of filler seeing as how the most prominent musical statement is now the single. And since it's pretty hard a have an album that is 1 hit single after another something has to fill in the blanks...

I agree, I would like this band so much more if this wasn't true.

To add to the topic, I agree with what has been said. For me, filler can also be a song on an album that doesn't really take a risk, or it just seems safe. Generic sounding and uninteresting usually means filler to me.

The quinessential filler song in two parts: