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Animal Collective, "Hollinndagain"
I thought I was in for an exciting trip with the first few minutes of this reissue. "I See You Pan" has a fascinating sound: like popcorn popping but all the kernels are made of stainless steel. It is noise but in a quiet and dynamic way. Alas my enjoyment of things wasn’t to last when the vocals and organ arrive.
Paw Tracks
This reissue of Hollinndagain is totally unnecessary and of interest only to those obsessed by Animal Collective. It is evidence for the idea that just because a band has a released a limited edition and very out of print recording, it’s not always good practice to make it available to the masses. The singer sounded like Thom Yorke singing Can, a most unpleasant thought unfortunately realized on this album. This and the following two songs are taken from a radio session but despite this they don’t sound particularly well recorded; there is an awful lot of hum and hiss which, even during my highly under funded college radio days, was unacceptable from a live in-house session. All three pieces are monotonous and mind-numbingly repetitive, void of spirit and emotion.
The four songs that close the album are taken from various live performances. A couple of them make the somewhat dodgy sounding radio session sound like a glossy million dollar production. “Pumpkin Gets a Snakebite” sounds woeful, like it was recorded through a payphone outside the venue. I expect this sort of quality from 10th generation bootleg tapes but not from a release like this.
The performances themselves are average at best and to be honest, I’d be embarrassed to release them if I was Animal Collective. They need all the help they can get to hide the cracks of mediocrity that plague them, Hollinndagain turns these cracks into gaping fissures. There’s no finesse, skill or promise to their playing. The attempts at building up an atmosphere on “Lablakely Dress” are laughable as they make elements that have been used by other artists before to great effect into hideous clichés.
While I can cope with Animal Collective's studio recordings, ropey live recordings of lacklustre performances are nothing but a test of my patience.
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