Animal Collective
Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom
1.20.09
With seizure inducing lighting setting off a rainbow of colors behind them, and an extra heavy bass shaking the walls, Animal Collective put on one hell of a show on Tuesday night. There’s no question they are the band of the moment, and 2009 is their year. Unlike many other bands that get this sort of attention, Animal Collective is doing everything right in justifying all of the praise. “Merriweather Post Pavillion” has received universal praise, and it is, from start to finish, just as good as everyone is saying. There were a lot of fine albums last year, even great, but nothing so fun, yet fully-realized and beautifully produced.
At Manhattan Center’s Grand Ballroom on Tuesday night, they could have just played the album as it is on the record and they surely would have pleased the legion of young fans who clustered near the stage early on, and casual fans, but that’s not what great bands do. Instead, the trio stretched out songs like “Fireworks” and “Banshee Beats” to ridiculous lengths and reconstructed them. It’s one of the things a band can get away with live that is far harder to pass off on record. The usual Residents meets Brian Wilson references still fit the sounds they were generating, but midway through the set as I fell deeper under the trance of their repetitious electronic compositions, the name Underworld kept entering my thoughts. Yes, Animal Collective’s sound is starting to show similarities to Underworld. And with them likely to be playing much larger venues in the very near future, it’s not a bad thing to have things in common with a legendary band that can command a dance floor of thousands.
In the past, Animal Collective’s shows were loaded with new songs in their developmental stage. Anyone who saw them over the last couple years was more than familiar with many of the songs of Merriweather Post Pavillion far before it was released. Tuesday night, however, they chose to play nothing unreleased, and maybe that’s what made it so great. Rather than hearing the songs in their developmental stage, we were hearing them as fully-realized compositions, with hardly a single flaw. The older songs fit seamlessly with the new ones, with updated soundscapes that felt cohesive to their current aesthetic.
Highlights of the set included the 1-2 punch of "My Girls" and "Brother Sport" which ended the regular part of the set, as well as the incredible encore that began with a sprawling "Banshee Beat" and closed with the ancient "Slippi."Yes, "Slippi!" Indiana Jones himself couldn't have tracked this one down on the set lists of recent years. It was a real treat for longtime fans.
Where Radiohead once seemed to unquestionably be the best band alive, Animal Collective is now shrinking that gap. Not all bands can continue to transform and develop their sound with every record. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Blur all did it, and now Animal Collective is too. Liars could be next.
Animal Collective will be at Bowery Ballroom tonight, but the show is sold out. So, if you want to see them before they’re only playing large capacity venues, you better think of something fast.
NYC Taper recorded the show.
