Sometimes super short, sometimes long: noughties psychedelia goes to extremes.
Animal Collective have always played music that sounded as if you were listening to the Beach Boys’ work through an enchanted filter that changes frequencies and manipulates sound sequences. If this filter really exists and if Animal Collective have control over it, then Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakin have set it to the lowest setting for the first track on their twelfth album: “Soul Capture” grooves to a sunny melody , a bit long for a Beach Boys song, but absolutely conceivable on an album like SUNFLOWER or HOLLAND.
The idea behind ISN’T IT NOW? was to separate the experimental arm from the animal collective master data. This explains comparatively super-short pieces like “Broke Zodiac” or “All The Clubs Are Broken” – not interludes, mind you, but mature songs, albeit under three minutes.
The contrast program to this: “Magicians From Baltimore”, a psychedelia trip that is almost ten minutes long, on which the band plays a very direct and unmanipulated rock sound at times. More than twice as long: “Defeat”, almost 22 minutes, which begins as if the Fleet Foxes were standing around with Alice in Wonderland and then continues in all sorts of directions: 60s psych, 70s prog, ghost train pop. Crazy long. Crazy good.