Feels finds the band manipulating sound in novel ways, using field recordings, feedback, and electronic effects in addition to guitar, autoharp, and piano and continuing to eschew traditional pop-song structure. There’s nothing on the album that could be called a verse or a chorus. Yet it’s also their most accessible release. Just don’t mention that to Portner. “That word really bothers us. It’s something that I can’t see any musician ever using. For us it isn’t like ‘We’re making this really catchy pop record,’ because to us all of our records are like that. We really like melodies and we like pop music and that’s just an element that’s always there.” He’s right: pop melodies have always bubbled just beneath the surface of AC’s music. But on Feels they surface in a way that’s bringing more and more people into the Animal Collective fold. The disc combines formal and sonic inventiveness with memorable melodies — no mean feat. The rhythmic catchiness and complexity of “The Purple Bottle” and “Banshee Beat” move body and mind; you’re so busy absorbing all the ambient sounds swirling around the room or between your headphones, you don’t even notice that your legs are getting tired from bouncing to the polyrhythmic beats.
Animal Collective have referred to Feels as their “love record,” and Portner explains that the lyrics, most of which he wrote, have to do with relationships. But he says the term also refers to the band’s deep friendship and their appreciation of being able to make music together even though Portner and Dibb live in New York, Weitz lives in DC, and Lennox lives in Lisbon. “It just becomes more intense to get together now and play, more special. We say that because of the emotions that are involved in us all playing together. It’s making us happy to be able to play together.”
Animal Collective + First Nation | Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street, Boston | Feb 21 | 617.228.6000
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