Animal Collective - Hollinndagain

  by Jamie Rowland

published: 20 / 8 / 2006

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Review

Originally released in 2002, this "live album" is not what you might expect; no cheering crowds, no talk from the band to the audience, and most likely no songs you will recognise. Made up of 3 tracks from a WFMU radio session and 4 songs from shows in New York, Nashville and Austin (shows at which the audiences were mostly made up of friends of the band). Because their gigs were often attended by the same crowds, Animal Collective felt that it was important to vary what they heard, so as to keep the shows interesting. For this reason, all the songs were original compositions, most of which were never recorded in any form. So we should really be thankful that Paw Tracks have decided to bring this record, originally limited to 300 copies, back out again. These recordings were made after the release of the band’s second album, 'Danse Manatee', and sound much more similar to that and other early recordings like 'Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished' and 'Campfire Songs'. If you have only got into Animal Collective in the last few years, through the more commercial 'Sung Tongs and Feels', then this record may come as a surprise to you. Opener ‘I See You Pan’ is 10 minutes long, and a good deal of it is made up of crunching white noise and feedback, and although in the second half more melody comes through, the song actually becomes incredibly sparse, with just a few vocal loops repeating and the odd electronic noise creeping forward. The 11 minute track that follows, ‘Pride and Fight’, has a slightly more song-like structure, but is still very experimental, and has no verse/chorus/verse structure. The third track (and the last to be taken from the WFMU session) ‘Forest Gospel’ starts with an absolutely lethal assault on the drums, accompanied by howled, tribal chants. The song comes in waves, the drums dying down to mere taps and then building suddenly into aggressive hammering. In the last section, the track is barely any sound at all. If anything, the tracks taken from actual live shows are even stranger than the radio tracks, for the most part they are indecipherable vocals covered by hammering drums and electronic noise. The best of these tracks is probably ‘Pumpkin Gets a Snakebite’, the last track on the album, which I think gives the best feeling of the atmosphere you might have felt at one of these early gigs. While the tracks have no real hook to bring a listener in, I think that this record is worth having and hearing, if only to document this part of the band’s journey from a two-piece psychedelic noise outfit playing experimental shows to small groups of friends to a four-piece alternative pop band who played Reading and Leeds festivals this year. If you are of fan of Animal Collective’s earlier recordings, then this is a record you will want to have.

Track Listing:-

1 I See You Pan
2 Pride And Fight
3 Forest Gospel
4 There's An Arrow
5 Lablakely Dress
6 Tell It To The Mountain
7 Pumpkin Gets A Snakebite