Digest - The Morning News

Listening • Animal Collective

Animal Collective have a new album and we have a new year. It’ll take a while to get to grips with both, so I’m jumping in, spread-eagle, and soaking it up; hesitation and caution are bad resolutions. “My Girls” is all purple lightening, Koyaaniqatsi scenery and soundtrack, magic carpets. It wipes memory of 2008 not with a blinding light, but a haze of glittery samples and drummed thunder. Bubbles of synth burst at the speed of two handclaps as the flesh drips and the metal body is revealed: pulsating, chanting, living. Just don’t call Merriweather Post Pavilion your album of 2009. Bide your time. Pounce in late spring. (Not in January when comparisons to Tropicalia seem alien and wrong.) —Mike Smith, Jan. 6, 2009

» Listen to "My Girls" at the band's MySpace

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Listening • Ambient Religious Jam

The words “folk,” “pastoral,” and “Tropicalia” ensure I read the whole piece and listen to whatever music is being pushed my way—“Tropicalia” references the hazy, Brazilian psychedelica to which Deerhunter side-project Atlas Sound are often compared. “Jam session,” in reference to “ambient-punks” Deerhunter, similarly draws me in as someone who knows little of the legends of jam, except that jam is good and great, as Ohmpark agrees: “All weekend long at the beach house, we had a daily, serious Microcastle jam session. It was sort of like a religious experience.”

Not just any of your mother’s jam, a serious jam session. One that emphasizes how worthy of study and contemplation Deerhunter are on Microcastle—especially when you are at the beach house with friends who aren’t going to attack you for reading too much into a six- minute jam.

Some critics like to talk about how “texturally cohesive” Deerhunter’s latest work is. That’s fine, but I like to enjoy my jam without thinking about that. I like talking with friends about why we like Deerhunter’s jam “Nothing Ever Happened” so much, not whether the jam has the right viscosity. —Mike Smith, Sep. 19, 2008

» Listen to "Nothing Ever Happened" at Ohmpark

SHARE THIS • EMAIL THIS • FILE UNDER: Atlas Sound, Deerhunter, Ohmpark, Tropicalia

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