Animal Collective: ‘Isn’t It Now’ album review: A quirky, kitchen-sink album
Whimsical and psychedelic as ever, Animal Collective’s latest album, Isn’t It Now, is their longest record yet. The release marks a lot of virginal moments for the experimental rockers, being the first time in over a decade that two consecutive albums have featured the same lineup, made up of Geologist (Brian Weitz), Avey Tare, (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), and Deakin (Josh Dibb).
It makes for a very intriguing listen, because there’s a sense of push-and-pull felt across the album as they try to resist treading old ground, with varying degrees of success. On the out is their more recent sojourn into shorter songs, with the likes of ‘We Go Back and ‘Walker’ push towards a symphony. And a mammoth centrepiece comes in the form of the 21-minute long ‘Defeat’, a vibrational vibe-check halfway through the record that seriously slows down the pace with some lo-fi atmospheric soundscapes.
That ‘Defeat’ needles on slightly too long barely matters. It’s not an album that needs to be absorbed in an any particular order, and listening to that actually seems to work against its core philosophy. You’re better off plucking a random song out of its nine and rolling with it. While there’s a certain narrative carried through them, which seems to be overriding fear coupled with hope, it’s not presented in a linear way.
The introduction of hip-hop and jazz engineer Russell Elevado sees the band make full use of electric guitars and piano, and cast aside the busier instrumentation they’ve opted for previously. The result is an often too steady pace, that might capture the magic of The Moody Blues and Velvet Underground, but at the cost of never boldly upping the tempo and enthralling you.
‘Gem & I‘ sums this up well. “Let’s do it again, and again, and again, and again,” it declares, in what would sound like a damning statement on their repetitive song stylings, but it’s not quite. Every song on the album distils the same earthy psychedelic influence, but the approach is unique on each track.
Take its opener, ‘Soul Capturer’. A somewhat shrill ’60s psych track, decrying such non-specific vices, that you’re free to insist it’s about whatever personal distractions have their hooks in you. If your particular trouble is your attention span, it also serves as a good warning to buckle up for the 64-minute odyssey.
‘Magicians From Baltimore’ is a Zappa-esque curiosity, that would be frustrating in it’s stop-start nature if the transitions weren’t so crisp. ‘Broke Zodiac’ is more middle of the line psych pop, complete with charming harmonies that signal a brief departure from full-on sonic strangeness. ‘Genies Open’ is one such song, unrelentingly weird in the best way. Halfway between a fever dream and Pink Floyd, it’s breezy and dry at the same time – weaving from a glittering opening build to a fastidious drum that carries you through the next seven minutes.
Bizarrely, when they sound the most commercial is when they’re most capable of surprising you. ‘Stride Right’ features an agonised Deakin vocal, set to a contemplative piano with a few flashes of fizzing technicolour. It’s the one I’d have pegged for the album closer, seeming to speak to the death of a dream: what’s left when all you have to clutch onto is nebulous hippie idealism? But again, there doesn’t need to be a closer on this record. It’s a quirky collection Animal Collective have thrown the kitchen-sink at, each track residing in it’s own separate sonic world that feels fully formed and unique.
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