Animal Collective – Painting With

For more than a decade Animal Collective has towed the avant-garde line. They are more artistic sounding than your average band. Now they have focused less on the artistic aspect of their music and made something that should be digestible to a larger group of music fans. Their tenth album is more peppy pop than anything else. You will hear hints of Michael Jackson, Beach Boys, John Cale and even The Ramones here. Ninety percent of what happens here is bright, full of spunk and fast. Zippy winners are “Golden Gal”, “Hocus Pocus” and “Recycling”. With all the high energy a more appropriate title would have been Cooking With Gasoline. Some things do remain the same, however. It definitely has that ethereal feel to it and that is mostly due to the collective voices of the trio. They mesh their vocal instruments (and their voices really are used as instruments as they melt in with music) together in an ear catching way. The whole package of music and voices is completely addictive and loads of fun. With the new sound this becomes a whole new animal.