An intensely beautiful, intensely difficult record. It is reclusive, cryptic, late-night paranoia music, so unsettling and loud that at times it's almost too intimate, even in the absence of any real identifying details.
The Spirit of the Beehive have a wide sonic palette within every song, pop rock rhythms and sweet melodies supporting dolefully sung detachment pair with atonal, crushingly heavy noise rock crafted perfectly to necessitate repeat listens.
Isn't It Now? absolutely lands as a classic, it's mix of playfulness and earnestness, glittery pop and tessellated textures seeming to synthesize and update all that has ever made and still makes this band so compelling.
This latest offering is the most crystallized version of the band's aesthetic, a continued meditation on the end of relationships and the unsteadiness that follows. It is a meticulous, beautiful, and quietly heartbreaking collection of songs.
Feels is Animal Collective's sixth studio album originally released in 2005 and features all four band members - Avey Tare, Deakin, Geologist, and Panda Bear.
In their Sung Tongs incarnation, Animal Collective has perhaps their most perfect, accessible work to date, a luscious flowering and flowing together of deeply catchy, hook-filled songs and intricately textured arrangements.