The Hottness Of A Generation: Animal Collective

Animal Collective have totally sold out on the disappointing Merriweather Post Pavilion. J/K LOL. It’s weird to have what very well could be the best record I listen to all year be the very first album of the year I listen to. It has tempered my expectations of every 2009 album I have approached thus far. It is almost impossible to find a bad review on this thing, and you’ll find no exception to that here. I doubt I’ll end up liking it as much as I love Sung Tongs, but it is pretty nearly perfect.

So instead of talking about the music on the album, as everyone else on the Internet has already done that, I’m going to talk more about the cultural relevance of Animal Collective. Hipster Runoff did a really long piece on this subject that you should read, and that site is the most consistently hilarious music blog on the planet, so you should really be reading that more often anyways.

Now it has taken me a fairly long time to fully appreciate AnCo and be completely on the bandwagon. I have always liked them, but I thought of them more as a weird anomaly than the influential wizards they appear to be now. I always try to approach hype with some skepticism, but Animal Collective is worthy of the infinite Internet popularity they now possess. Not only can pretty much everyone agree their new album is great, but there is an army of new acts that are heavily influenced by the Collective. I was really put off by so many people copycatting AC’s sounds at first, but over time I’ve come to appreciate how many different directions you can take the aesthetic in. I mean, Animal Collective are changing the course of modern music all by themselves, in ways that seem only to be eclipsed by goliaths like The Beatles and Nirvana. In a post-blog/internet music world where there are billions of artists and opinions to compete against, their universality in that sphere is mindbogglingly impressive. But AC’s overall cultural relevance is almost entirely limited to an elite crowd of people with Internet.

Most of this decade, one question I have pondered is, “Who is the biggest and best band to come out of the Oughts?” I believe there is a strong correlation between the old school music industry monolithic voice and the ability of a band to completely blow up into an icon that transcends mainstream and underground/alternative. The Internet has fundamentally changed how this works. People now have way more choices in both the diversity available and the sources to locate those varieties, making the target market for something universally appealing shrink. No longer can a few powerful people force the masses to listen to something because they lack other options to explore. The conventional machine of the music industry has been swiftly losing its influence for the greater part of this decade as people abandon the music fascism for a democratic Internet/blog music world. A great divide has evolved between these two worlds as this happens as well, creating a much more difficult obstacle to overcome in being able to achieve a transcendental popularity/authenticity cultural relevance a band like Radiohead now enjoys.

People with weirder tastes have completely abandoned the FM Radio Stations and major labels, and so their influence in those realms have disappeared, resulting in pop music more terrible than average (did you see the Grammys?). Also, piracy plays a huge role, as most people with Internet illegally download music. This has made the big labels decide to shift their focus towards pushing music targeting at people without Internet, the poorer, less educated non-elites. Over the course of this decade, these factors have created an increasing rift between the Pitchfork world of music and the Billboard Top 100 world of music. Not that the pop music world and underground music world have ever enjoyed a lengthy coalition, but they now seem more divided than ever. The other difference is how popular the underground music world has become relative to mainstream music. Never has alternative music rivaled pop music’s popularity with an audience that doesn’t wholly crossover between the two.

At first I cheered these trends on because it appeared that more and more people were abandoning the mainstream music world and discovering the world of music as art. I’ve never been one to want to be the only person listening to good music as some indier-than-thou folks would like. I like underground music getting popular instead of people rewarding crappy pop music, and I really felt like an underground revolution of sorts was happening. But one has to wonder if there is a limit to the size of your audience before quality no longer becomes the centerpiece no matter how counter-mainstream your scene. I discussed this in my Top 50 album list of 2008 post, so I won’t go on at length, but I think we are approaching a saturation point in how big Indie music can get without the democratic voices of increasing numbers moving things in more mainstream and boring directions (ie. Vampire Weekend/Fleet Foxes). But Animal Collective’s across the board success within the indie world presents a counter point to my slight pessimism.

Animal Collective is clearly the most popular band in the blogosphere to emerge from this decade, and they will certainly gain some fans in the pop music realm from their latest effort, but they aren’t transcendental enough to crossover completely. The pop music fans who are able to appreciate a band like Animal Collective are the same people that have been going bonkers for bands like Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, and TV On The Radio. Animal Collective isn’t going to be able to win over many people that aren’t already fans of the more pop blog bands, but they will be able to attract the same fans without the backlash and Internet criticism. While I may not think Fleet Foxes are as good as they are hyped, their popularity has probably lead many people towards experimental bands dabbling in pop like Deerhunter and Animal Collective that would never have been given a chance without some bridge bands into the indie music world.

So, while I still think that the continued increasing popularity of blog/Internet music will lead to its quality being diluted over time, Animal Collective’s triumph leads me to believe that we are a still a ways away from that trend being pervasive. AnCo represent the high water mark, the measuring stick for how far Indie music has come. They will probably never enjoy the mainstream success Radiohead enjoys now, but I think that is almost completely because of the music scene environment where they grew up. For the music blog generation, they are as important as The Beatles, even if they will never come close to a fraction of the pop culture relevance. They are still influencing the course of music almost as heavily as the biggest of all-time and most random Americans/Joe the plumber types have never heard of them. They are a unique phenomenon for a unique generation.

Ok, how about some goodies:

Animal Collective video for “My Girls”:

Animal Collective : What Would I Want Sky (BBC Session)

Animal Collective : Lion In A Coma (BBC Session)

Ratatat : Mirando (Animal Collective remix)

And here is a recent live show:

Animal Collective
Koko, London
12th Jan 2009

01. In The Flowers
02. Daily Routine
03. Also Frightened
04. new song ‘Blue Sky?’
05. Slippi
06. Winter’s Love
07. Guys Eyes
08. Summertime Clothes
09. Lion In A Coma
10. Brother Sport
11. ————-
12. Banshee Beat
13. Chores
14. My Girls

Download Lossless Torrent Here

Finally, let’s take it old school:

Animal Collective “Live at The Old Market” Fatcat Records:

Avey Tare & Panda Bear – Covered in frogs/winter’s:

• Posted by Davy Minor on February 9, 2009 at 4:20 pm
• Tags: Animal Collective, Panda Bear, The Hottness
  

4 Responses to “The Hottness Of A Generation: Animal Collective”

1. No Says: February 10th, 2009 at 1:55 am

   This band is seriously awful. Stop it. You’re just perpetuating undeserved hype. Let’s add electronics to Beach Boys-style pop. Great. How boring.

2. Zebra Face & The Archeologist Says: February 10th, 2009 at 5:15 am

   LOL

3. anon Says: February 10th, 2009 at 3:39 pm

   excellent post! Be sure to check out telefon tel aviv’s most recent and sadly last collective album ‘Immaculate Yourself” if you havent already..I’d love to read a review!

4. John Says: March 29th, 2009 at 11:38 am

   Unfortunately, the people going bonkers over fleet foxes and TVOTR are the same people going bonkers over everything else Pitchfork pushes. Then all the blogs go crazy and get into the whole communal, generational vibe. I like AC a lot; I just think most “indie rock” is boring. Not to mention hipsters ruin everything for everyone, meaning that they’ll hype AC till their shows are selling out or nobody who just enjoys the music and doesn’t want to write a blog about them will want to go to the shows because they’re filled with douche bags. Been into AC since “Sung Tongs” and “Young Prayer”; approached them from like a Mike Patton kind of perspective, and now see that people are seeing them as ironic or something and not getting it.

Post a comment.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

« What Up In The ATL?

Radiohead at The Grammys »