Fluxblog 433: Animal Collective Universe
Plus new songs by Model/Actriz, Jungle, Burial, and Maribou State
This week’s playlist is ANIMAL COLLECTIVE UNIVERSE, a chronological retrospective of their singular and sprawling body of work including solo works, collaborations, remixes, and more from 2000 up through, like, a week ago. I think this set does a good job of showing their artistic journey through all that time, and makes a strong case that Avey Tare and Panda Bear have a remarkable talent for writing melodies that goes all the way back to the beginning of their career.
If you’re new to AnCo I suggest diving in and cherry picking the songs that immediately grab you and spend some time with those before jumping back in for more. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Here’s the full annotated track listing…
Throwing A Voice Into A Well
Model/Actriz “Slate”
“Slate” is essentially a song about unrequited love performed with the life-or-death intensity of horror, from Cole Haden’s breathy and desperate vocals on down to Jack Wetmore’s guitar, which sounds like frantic metal clicking, and not much like guitar at all. Model-Actriz’s music mostly sounds like a fresh take on industrial to me – all harsh mechanical tones, unrelenting grooves, and strong suggestion of both vulgarity and sadomasochism. They often sound like they’re trying to channel “March of the Pigs” and “Closer” simultaneously, with Haden bringing an erotic charge and overt sensuality to their most brutal and abrasive music. It’s clear enough in “Slate” that lust and violence overlap quite a bit for Haden and as much as the song expresses a deprived and distressed mindset of someone who knows they can’t have exactly what they want, they can’t deny their satisfaction in the submission and humiliation.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
High In The Daytime
Jungle “Back on 74”
“Back on 74” is a beautifully composed delivery system for a gorgeously harmonized chorus, one so smooth and balmy and comforting that it can make your whole body suddenly relax upon hearing it. The verses feel relaxed too, but a little tighter as the chords and vocal cling to a crisp pocket beat, opening up a lot of negative space in the mix. Once the harmony vocals click in the song gets a lot more dense but the weight shifts, making it feel like you’ve suddenly plunged into a warm pool of water. Jungle and their collaborators are using a lot of old R&B tricks here to great effect but the song doesn’t come out sounding super retro – you recognize the old moves, but the structure and tone feels a little more…mechanical? It’s not electronic, but you can intuit a lot of electronic music ideas informing the decisions here.
Buy it from Jungle.
Nothing Around You But Clear Blue Sky
Burial “Unknown Summer”
In the same way that Wes Anderson is a cartoonist who somehow works in the medium of live action film, Burial is a filmmaker who somehow works in the medium of music. This is especially true of Burial’s more recent works, which tend to be one-off singles that contain enough musical ideas to feel like entire albums condensed into ten minutes or so. This isn’t to say that there’s a plot to these songs, but more that the movements in the music come across as scenes that imply narrative structure. Even with some intelligible vocal samples floating through the track this is a very abstract work and the bits that really hit are purely musical – an opening sequence that deliberately fries your perception of time, a balearic house keyboard part that feels like a flashback to a happier time, the way everything in the final third seems to slowly disintegrate. All the little disorienting asymmetries in this track are masterfully edited and lend the overall composition a bittersweet nostalgic quality that I find very, very moving in ways I can’t quite explain.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Do That For You
Maribou State “Blackoak”
The string arrangement in “Blackoak” gives the song a majestic feel, but it’s a casual sort of majesty I’d compare to, say, Lisa Stansfield’s classic “All Around the World.” I think a lot of this comes down to the way a very lived-in soulful vocal part adds depth to the drama built up by the music rather than amps it up further. It counters the hyperbolic quality of the arrangement without deflating it and conveys a very centered perspective that really sells the gratitude at the heart of the song. That sentiment hits harder with the implication that it’s coming from someone who sees the person they’re addressing very clearly.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Jazz Monroe wrote a terrific profile of the newly mainstream Four Tet for The Guardian.
• Maya Georgi of Rolling Stone talked to the pop-punk band Yellowcard, who are fairly baffled as to why they now are able to play pretty large venues around the United States after spending most of their career as more of a club act.
• Molly O’Brien reports from the fifth of Taylor Swift’s shows at Los Angeles’ Sofi Stadium, with a digression about some fans blacking out their experiences at Eras shows, which is nutty!
If you dig "Unknown Summer" make sure to check out his remix of Monic's "Deep Summer," he's recycling a lot of motifs from that one, which is an absolute masterpiece.