“When your imagination shows you what only time is supposed to tell you.”
Following up on their poppiest effort in Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective returned to the spotlight with a hectic album full of busy-sounding jams that form an all-out aural assault. Never a group to rest on their past successes, they move on from the successful formulas of MPP and adopt a grating electronic aesthetic that relies heavily on dense loops while drawing on a diverse array of influences. The sound is distinct from the chlidish Danse Manatee as well as the cluttered Strawberry Jam, but it proves that the formula that worked so well on the landmark 2009 album involved rather large amounts of both restraint and polish which are lacking here. But restraint and polish are not what makes these boys tick; they want to improvise, to sketch abstract outlines, to avoid the work of refinement and instead continuously enjoy the pulse of creativity. That’s certainly more fun to do, but it doesn’t make for a better album.
Like many of their releases, I’m sure Centipede Hz was a heck of a fun record to make, throwing things at the wall, and finding that all of it stuck; every last bit of sonic sludge belonged on the wall. There is almost no moderation, no pulling back to reveal a song in its purest form. Everything is buried, distorted, mutilated into an overloaded mess of sweet goo. It is like a psychedelic artwork with simply too many coats of paint slopped on top of one another.
Absent on the previous album, Deakin returns to the fold and contributes a lot of live guitar work, a stark contrast to the sample driven songs on Merriweather. And occassionally you can actually tell that it is a guitar he is playing, but usually not. Despite some strong melodies (with Avey Tare singing in an intentionally abrasive voice), none of them really stand out from the frenetic backing tracks and most of the songs give the impression of wading through a thick swamp of jumbled ideas. And that’s a shame, because it sounds like there might be some really good songs buried in here just waiting to be set free from the overbearing synths and horns and whatever other electronic weirdness was layered on top of them. Counterintuitively, by the time you arrive at the end of the album, what initially seems like a sonically diverse record ends up feeling very monotonous. Maybe the technologically overstimulated generation needs such heavy production to even get their attention. But most of the time it just gives me a headache.
If I must say something nice, I will say that the structural concept of the album is neat. Centipede Hz is a “concept” album similar to The Who’s The Who Sell Out. The tracks are interspersed with white noise and snippets of radio chatter. But The Who did it better.
When Animal Collective restrain themselves and focus their experimental tendencies they can create some very good music. When they get carried away and mix all the paint colors together, what you get is a mottled and sickly grey-brown that looks like one of the kids might have thrown up on the paper instead of painting.
Favorite Tracks: Today’s Supernatural; New Town Burnout.