I'd never heard of Animal Collective before and so this was a journey into a band I had no prior knowledge of. I wasn't really sure of what to expect and the only indication I had of what to prepare my ears for was Matt's genre classification of 'experimental'. I'll be honest, this genre tag rarely evokes feelings of excitement from me and so I was never expecting a masterpiece.
So, what did I find in Animal Collective? The original sound was not what I had immediately anticipated and I actually found it a struggle to listen to to begin with. After the first two songs I couldn't wait for the album to end and had placed it firmly in the 'not for me' pile. I found the music very monotonous and the vocals were hardly inspiring. I felt like I was listening to a bizarre combination of R.E.M and MGMT and I didn't like it. 'Also Frightened' did little to change my opinion and I found myself considering what kind of person could enjoy such a record.
However, I persevered with the small hope that the album would make a vigorous change in it's sound or that I would somehow manage to train my ears to enjoy it. Now, there is usually always something for me in an album and thankfully by the time I reached 'Summertime Clothes' and 'Daily Routine' I found that I was tapping along to the beat and enjoying the music a lot more than in previous tracks. I wouldn't say there was a huge change musically in these songs and in fact I found the whole album to be distinctly lacking in variety but something about these two tracks altered my perception of the album slightly.
From this point on the rest of the record went by me relatively calmly and whilst the songs were no longer a huge annoyance, they were still far from stimulating my musical tastes. I conclude that Animal Collective are somewhat of an acquired taste and whilst originally sounding like a musical equivalent of AID's to me, grew into something which was a lot more tolerable.
I give the album a score of 2 out of 5.
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