More about: Animal Collective

Animal Collective, the capricious quartet made up of Avey Tare, Deakin, Geologist, and Panda Bear, are a band that has constantly bent their ecstatically-warped music into new and strange shapes. Periodically stepping between experimental pop, freak folk, electronic music and psychedelic rock, their breakthrough came with 2007’s one-two punch of their Domino debut Strawberry Jam and Panda Bear’s groundbreaking Person Pitch solo album, followed by 2009’s ubiquitous Merriweather Post Pavilion. 

Time Skiffs, their first album proper since 2016’s Painting With, finds the band reaching the grand old age of 20. Animal Collective mainstays of vaulting melodies and angularly rhythmic arrangements are still in force but the temptations to seemingly throw everything possible into a song seem to be tempered by patience and — as shocking as it is — maturity. Songs develop in their own time and space. The songs sound relaxed and at ease with themselves. It almost revels in its relative normalcy. 

Of course, it’s actually far from “normal”. There are tropical barn dances ('Strung with Everything'), cowboy hymns ('Prester John'), and jaunty psych-nursery rhymes ('Walker'), all which sound like they could have been recorded in a desert cave or on another planet.

Animal Collective are as psychedelic as they’ve ever been, but it doesn’t feel forced for a minute. By wrapping up progressive instrumentation, subtle experiments, and innovative arrangements within deliciously memorable songs; more often than not they hit a sweet spot where pop music and the avant-garde exist happily as one. ‘Car Keys’ is delightful, a conversation of call and response riffs encompassing spacious Beach Boys harmonies, with an untroubled, unhurried extended outro. By the time the ambient-prog-waltz ‘Royal and Desire’ drifts off to close the album, everything feels at peace. 

Unshowy, confident and comforting, Time Skiffs is a compellingly natural-sounding album made by a band hitting 20 years in their stride. 

Time Skiffs is out now. 

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More about: Animal Collective