ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
CAT'S CRADLE, CARRBORO, NC
SEPTEMBER 27, 2007
WORDS & PHOTOS: AW HENDERSON

Everyone loves Animal Collective now. Their appeal is widening so rapidly that even MTV did an online feature on them not too long ago. In fact, it seems the only place to find Animal Collective detractors is within the indie rock community that provided the band’s first fans to begin with, and we all know how little influence we actually have on popular culture. So, these guys are poised to be huge. They’re already bursting the seams of our little bubble, but can a band as completely weird as Animal Collective really be the next Modest Mouse or Arcade Fire? I really, really doubt it.

First, you’ve got their live show. What the hell is this shit? Do they deliberately take the songs we want to hear and fuck around with them, just to throw us off balance? It must have been frustrating for the kids in the crowd who only wanted to hear “Grass” because that’s definitely not what Panda Bear, Avey Tare or Geologist (Deakin was absent) had in mind for the night. Every song was mildly recognizable, and yet engagingly fucked-around-with. I confess that I haven’t been keeping up with the new, post-Strawberry Jam material, so what may come across as unintelligible noodling to me could very likely be next year’s big indie rock sensation. The songs I was familiar with, though, were enhanced in the way that only bands as unhinged as AC can make them. Layers of reverb, interlaced vocal melodies and shrieks, intermittent drumming, bright towers of rainbow light and huge skeletons all did nothing to conceal the pulsing heart of danceable pop music beating within most of the songs the band played. Although they did indeed wander into abstracter territory a few times, the majority of the performance was definitely audience-driven.

Which isn’t to say that the band were pandering or crowd-pleasing, which happens all too often with burgeoning bands. At no point in the night did it seem that they were tipping too far either into a greatest hits parade or self-centered experimentalism. With deftness, they played the songs we wanted to hear in the way they wanted to play them, which, it turns out, is also the way we wanted to hear them, we just didn’t know it beforehand.

Highlights from the night aren’t delineated by the ends of songs, but by the sensations that swelled throughout the performance, both auditory and visual. The lights and decorations complemented the band’s sonic freakshow keenly. These pictures don’t do the light show justice; rainbows shot out over the audience every few beats, whipping us up into a lollipop frenzy of enjoyment. I vaguely recall a truly psychotic rendition of “Who Could Win a Rabbit?” near the end of the night, but who can say what was really happening? I’m not sure even the guys on stage could answer that question, which undoubtedly is part of their charm.