keith!

at the request of dayvan cowboy, i'm here to rep some animal collective love.

october is gonna be a pretty sweet month for us eh AnCo bros? We've got the release of Avey Tares album Down There and a new single from Panda Bear. w00t, go us!

keith!

*sigh*
third post in a row in this thread. but this time i've got REAL news!

2 brand new Avey Tare songs from Down There are now out,
Lucky 1 and Oliver Twist.

Not exactly the direction I thought he would be takin' this album when it was described as "dark" and "swampy" but I'm still totally digging both of these tracks (Oliver Twist a little more).

Down There should be leaking pretty soon considering the amount of people who have it. I can't wait to hear it in it's entirety since apparently these songs are even better in context.

BottleUpAndEssplode

Hmm, interesting. You know I'm not really sure what to make of these new tracks. They didn't really strike me as being anything special but then again I said the same about Tomboy/Slow Motion by Panda Bear and I absolutely adore those now so I'm hoping these ones are growers as well.

These new tracks have a kind of melancholy feel to them in my opinion so I can see where Avey is coming from when he says they're more darking. I don't know. I think I'm going to reserve judgement until the full album comes out.

Jonny Redshirt

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Merriweather Post Pavilion. I thought Strawberry Jam was much better, but I think it's hilarious that a band as strange and offbeat as Animal Collective managed to get launched into the mainstream conscious at all.

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clutnuckle

I don't get how people think Merriweather/Strawberry Jam Animal Collective are 'strange and offbeat'. It's pop music. I will also never understand this insistence with people to call recent Animal Collective releases 'experimental'. They haven't done experimental/avant-folk music in over five years, yet people still wrongly attribute that kind of tag to them. It's great pop music now, guys. Just accept it. I understand that coining MPP experimental because there's some odd time signatures/reverb seems a bit fitting, but it's really not.

I really think that it stems from this mentality among the musically conscious that 'pop music is bad'. Pop music is great when done well; all genres are. So there's no need to attach unnecessary baggage onto bands when they don't need it.

debaserr

i'll agree that they are a pop band, and that all my favorites from them are pop. however, a very simple reaction from the casual listener occurs when they hear any song from either album. this shit sounds kind of weird. really think you are over-thinking yourself.

just take a moment and compare it to most top 40 radio type artists.

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clutnuckle

Well to be honest, I usually think that most people who'd bother to sign up for a music forum and frequent it are a bit more than just casual listeners. Usually the people who visit music forums consider music to be a pretty important part of their overall life, and that's why seeing it in music forums/websites all over the place makes me a bit skeptical.

Yes, it's a tad more bizarre than a top 40 hit. I'll take back that it's not 'strange and offbeat', sure, but experimental is a giant stretch.

Animal Collective: My Girls - Heavy repetition, electronic samples, reverberation, verse chorus verse structure

Top 40 generic hit - Heavy repetition, electronic samples, verse chorus verse structure.

I don't want to take anything away from Animal Collective - they obviously make very special pop music, and I would never claim otherwise, but I just want to take that tag away from their overreactive fans. Animal Collective deserve a lot of things, and certain genre tags just aren't among them.

debaserr

genres, who needs em?

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clutnuckle

That's probably something that separates our opinions; I suppose I'm OCD about these kinds of things; I love music, first and foremost, but cataloging my admiration into specific categories is ingrained into my mind. In the end, of course, it doesn't matter if the album you love is progressive flamenco music or post-japanese metalcore - you'll love what you love.

But even then, if genres don't matter, why are people so inclined to use them incorrectly? It's often taken for granted; it helps separate what you know you'll like from what you might not, but these kinds of incorrect tags/genres come from people who don't PUT the thought into categorization like I and other OCD-nuts do.

And I don't want to slag on them for that; it's their choice and I can definitely see how somebody would see organization without genres, but if you see it that way, why even use them?

I feel as though I've just made a mountain out of a molehill.

Edit: Disregard what I previously said, there's a much easier way to explain how I feel about genre tagging. You can do an optional assignment for your English class. You don't have to, but if you're going to do it, you want to do well, so you need to read up on the topic at hand, you need to experience the topic first-hand and live and breathe it for a while - after all, if you want to do well, you need to understand it from a first-hand perspective.

That's how I see genre-tagging. It's unessential, but if you want to do it, have good reason and backing for doing it.

storymilo

Yeah but..... that's My Girls. A lot of their songs (take Peacebone or something) really aren't poppy unless you count having catchy melodies as pop.