Animal Collective
Feels

Flesh Canoe feels like a song in slow motion, layers of sound built around lovingly purred vocals, while The Purple Bottle manages to sound both deeply tribal, silly and somehow terribly meaningful all at once, Avey Tare muttering smuttily, beautifully: “sometimes you hear me when others they can’t hear me/sometimes I’m naked and, thank god, sometimes you’re naked…can I call you just to hear you, would you care?”. In the spaces between the gurgling water noises, muttering, whooping and humming there are moments of truly sublime tenderness on Feels, the eccentricity of the supporting cast only serving to increase the warmth of the words.

Banshee Beat is the album’s climax; a track that blossoms and blooms over eight minutes of reflective chanting, singing and pianos, the song bursting into life with a chorus where Tare tries to “find the swimming pool”, eventually concluding that “either way you look at it you have your fits, I have my fits, but feeling is good”. It’s the best song the band have written to date, perfectly balancing the experimental and the conventional sides of their musical canon, resulting in an eight minute ballad that always leaves me shocked that such a relatively long period of time could pass me by so quickly. Turn Into Something is the giddy finale that Sung Tongs craved; when the walls of sound kick in, when the group start the ecstatic chanting and humming, I’m glad I own this record, that Animal Collective have made the album I hoped they’d make, and even that it’s autumn and summer’s over.