Animal Collective - Centipede Hz [2012]
 

http://media.musicfeeds.com.au/files...ac515e6ef0.jpg

1. Moonjock
2. Today's Supernatural
3. Rosie Oh
4. Applesauce
5. Wide Eyed
6. Father Time
7. New Town Burnout
8. Monkey Riches
9. Mercury Man
10. Pulleys
11. Amanita

You can stream it here.

The cover is laughably ugly, that's all I have to say at the moment. But their covers have always been ugly.

Edit: just got to "New Town Burnout", which has reaffirmed my belief that Panda Bear is the best member of Animal Collective

thats not the cover

http://cdn4.pitchfork.com/news/47560/f738b519.jpg

is now the official cover

Oh, so... shinier and more gaudy. Great :laughing:

That album art is so...odd and unattractive that it actually makes me want to check out the album.

Why wouldn't you? It's Animal Collective..

Can't say I have listened to them before.

It's well worth a listen, sir

I'll look into it. :thumb:

So this has happened to every AnCo album I've listened to, without fail:

The first spin elicits very much a "meh" response. The boops and beeps and weird noises are interesting but kind of just wash over me. Avey Tare sounds too whiney and Panda Bear sounds bored. It ends and I can't remember much of it.

And then the second and third spin happen, and then you understand why this group always gets a "best new music" tag from Pitchfork. The melodies are clearer and the songs catchier. The choruses are memorable and the beeps/boops become genuinely musical, instead of hipster-garbage-noise.

So... I'm liking it. It doesn't suck. Is it as good as MPP or Strawberry Jam or Sung Tongs? Mmmmm... probably not. Maybe.

"The first spin elicits very much a "meh" response. The boops and beeps and weird noises are interesting but kind of just wash over me. Avey Tare sounds too whiney and Panda Bear sounds bored. It ends and I can't remember much of it."

I am at this stage now, but it continues after the second and third listen.

Animal Collective are definitely a grower. Took me about 5 times to appreciate Merriweather Post Pavillion and 4 times to LOVE Strawberry Jam

Sometimes I can just tell. Not worth my time listening to something that isn't even remotely interesting four or five times just to see if it eventually grows. Too many new musics and too many musics I already love.

There are albums that have grown on me of course, but I gave them a chance because they peaked my interest in some form or another. Animal Collective essentially make background music for me.

That's a shame

Sometimes I don't give up listening to an album until I at least appreciate it. Unless the album just really doesn't click at all with me.

Not really. I'm all good, and happy you enjoyed it.

Thanks man!

I'm down to the last three tracks. So far, I'm mostly in agreement with the "meh" opinion, save for two tracks that have popped out at me. 'Moonjock' and 'Monkey Riches' have both had an appeal to my own sensibilities. I like that 'Moonjock' uses 7/8 meter, because it creates a real rhythmic pull for me. In my general experiences with them, I think Animal Collective does good with odd meters, because I think they have a good sense of how to make the uneven, asymmetrical base rhythms feel very natural. In the case of 'Monkey Riches', the backing line that runs through the whole song is something I think is really addictive. Half of the reason I kept my ear to that song in particular was because of that line and seeing how they worked it behind the material they put in the foreground.

Now that I'm on 'Pulleys', I feel like I can say that the second half of the album has caught on with me a lot stronger than the first half in general. The sound seems a little more cohesive and less manic, with less of a focus on trying to claustrophobically jam as much noise as possible into a song (which is one of AnCo's signature styles, granted). I think that perhaps someone looking for that dense sound from AnCo's earlier discography will find the second half of Centipede Hz boring and listless by comparison to the first half, but that's from the perspective of someone who's still not sold on the denser stuff, so that guess might be totally off-base.

Admittedly, I don't feel like I could solidly rate this album by virtue of the fact that my attention was a little more divided, and I got interrupted from listening a handful of times during the first half that I was, coincidentally or not, more unaffected by. I definitely think there's a lot more to Centipede Hz that I haven't heard yet. My current impression, I think, has me somewhere indeterminately between a 3 and a 4.

Ehehehe, makes me wonder how anybody could make this album cover and say: "Yeah, this'll do."

This just got a real rip, but unfortunately it was ripped with itunes. A FLAC will probably be available within 24h or so.

I don't have high hopes for this, I haven't really enjoyed much of anything they've released post-MPP.

I loved the new singles, but I'm waiting for the official release so i can buy it. I think. Maybe. I'm looking forward to it though, the way they described it sounded much rawer than Merriwether, which sounds about right. Is that right though?