December 2008 was the last month of my four month alcoholic binge sometimes referred to as the first semester of first year university. Its safe to say I don’t remember much from this period of time in my life, and what I do remember takes on a very blurry, surreal tone…recalling events from those few months is more of an affective experience than an actual concrete one. And given my very unstable nature at the time, the emotions guiding these memories are, for the most part, very troubled. I know MORE THAN A FEW people who can attest to this.

However, December brought with it an ataractic ray of light which cut through all the chaos and nihilism, a ray of light which came in the form of the release of Animal Collective’s “My Girls” and subsequent leak of the Merriweather Post Pavilion album. I don’t remember much with certainty from first year, but I’ll certainly never forget listening to “My Girls” like 400 times the first day that I heard it. I’m sure you remember your first time too. The song, and to a lesser extent the album, was a perfect slice of polished, euphoric bliss that anyone between the ages of 2 to 200 years old could enjoy. As 2008 became 2009 and the year went on, Merriweather Post Pavilion received accolade upon accolade, and was being hailed by some as the quintessential album of the decade. It seemed as though I wasn’t alone in finding refuge in the earnest, irony-free nature of Animal Collective’s music, especially in an age of cynicism in all forms of entertainment.

 

This is the age of cynicism, however, so hot on the tails of discussion about how great of an album Merriweather Post Pavilion was, came talk of how they would never be able to live up to it, and were essentially doomed as a group. I call this American Idiot Syndrome (I’m sure there are countless other examples of this phenomenon from the past, however this album coincides with my upbringing, so its the one I can relate to the most); basically, a band releases an opus that is such a culmination of everything the band stands for that anything else they could hope to release in the future is thus rendered obsolete. How do you follow up the best work of your career, something that everything you’ve done in the past has lead up to? You can’t release a rehash; Green Day did that with 21st Century Breakdown and that was right about the time that everyone stopped talking about them. You can try to go on and make something completely different, but then you risk pissing off everyone you pleased with your last album. Its an extremely difficult situation that any group that happened to stumble upon it by chance would fall victim to. The years went on, members of Animal Collective released solo efforts that were decent enough for their time, but all anyone was really interested in was how they were possibly going to follow up MPP. And surely enough, when news of the follow up emerged and the…questionable cover art was released, the cynic in everyone came out in full force. “AC jumped the shark”, they said, “Their reign over the indie kingdom was over”.

 

And you know what? It probably is. There’s nothing that even comes close to the communal catchiness of “My Girls” amongst the 11 tracks presented on Centipede Hz. And the glossy, radio-ready production of the rest of the album has been all but abandoned. But that’s not really the point. You see, in spite of the massive success of MPP, I truly believe that the Collective didn’t necessarily have that planned, or in mind when making it. They were already massive in indie circles by the time Strawberry Jam came out, and while I’m sure they realized the commercial potential of the songs they were writing for MPP, I’m positive that that wasn’t why they were writing them. They were just the logical next step forward in the band’s trajectory, and if worldwide domination came hand in hand with that, well, so be it. Listening to Centipede Hz, you can tell that the group was aware of the expectations laid on them after MPP, while simultaneously not really caring at all about them. And that really is the best way to approach this record: not as a follow up to arguably the biggest indie record of the decade, but as the next Animal Collective record, nothing more than that. Listening to it in that context, stripping away all predetermined notions of what this record is supposed to be, you’ll find a collection of songs that has the ability to please on the same scale as those on MPP, albeit in different ways. The electronic, sample-based band that made MPP is gone, almost literally with the return of multi-instrumentalist Deakin back in the fold after a hiatus following the release of Strawberry Jam. You can really hear him trying his hardest to make his presence known once again, as many of the songs feature noodling riffs and almost crunchy chords, something that wasn’t at all present on MPP. It almost sounds like, after the success of the previous album, Deakin was like ‘oh shit, I gotta get back into this’ and the weirdo production and mixing of guitars is him anxiously trying to remind everyone about himself. Deakin also has his own song on the album, “Wide Eyed” something that AC has never done before. In terms of songwriting, Portner handles almost all of the duties, taking control of 8 of the 11 songs on the album. And for a good reason; this new style of Animal Collective is much more suited to the frantic energy that Portner brings to the table, as opposed to the ego-crushing bliss that Lennox tends to gravitate towards.

 

Centipede Hz, as silly of a title as it may seem, is actually very suiting for this record. Each song has many different sounds or ‘legs’ that seem to scuttle around within the dense production. I’ve listened to this album a dozen times and I still hear new things crawling around underneath all the layers. One of the more interesting things about this album is that despite all of its layers, I wouldn’t consider it a ‘headphones’ album. The band tried their hardest to emulate a live sound with this record, and all of the different noises in the mix really need to get fleshed over a nice set of speakers in order for the listener to get the full effect. The band has also dropped the ambiance of MPP in favour of an incredibly rhythmic experience. You can hear Lennox rocking out on almost every type of percussion instrument you can imagine throughout the record, and it gives the songs a very playful feel that the band hasn’t had since their Strawberry Jam days. The term ‘difficult’ has been thrown around a lot to describe this record, but I really don’t think it deserves that description. Sure, it may not be as immediately catchy as MPP, but once you get used to the squirmy production, the tracks stick in your head more than anything from pre-MPP era. And they all sound somewhat similar, which isn’t a bad thing either. In spite of the gleeful mess of the production, the album is very focused and cohesive, and flows better than anything they’ve done in the past. Its a very different experience from MPP, but once you put the effort in, the album more than rewards you. Tracks like “Moonjock”, “Applesauce” and “Amanita” are up there with the best songs AC has ever recorded, and “Monkey Riches” is probably one of the best songs of the year so far. All it takes to realize this is a little bit of faith in the band, and these guys have definitely earned our trust by this point, so there’s no reason to give up on the album because its a little bit weirder than what we’re used to. And honestly, it isn’t even that weird. This collection of songs are some of the most straightforward the group has ever written, not to mention some of their best. Sure, I probably won’t be able to look back 3 years from now and remember the day I first heard “Today’s Supernatural”, or the rest of Centipede Hz for that matter. But I can guarantee that I’ll still be listening to these songs, and marveling at how they managed to pull off such a fantastic follow up to a perfect album.