Animal Collective

DISCOGRAPHY

Automine: Padington Band (EP, 1995) 6/10

Panda Bear: Panda Bear (1999) 6/10

Spirit They're Gone Spirit They've Vanished (1999) 7.5/10 +

Danse Manatee (2001) 7/10

Hollinndagain (live, 2001) 6/10

Campfire Songs (2002) 5/10

Here Comes the Indian (aka Ark, 2002) 7/10 

Sung Tongs (2004) 6.5/10 +

Panda Bear: Young Prayer (mini, 2004) 5/10

Feels (2005) 6/10

Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan: Pullhair Rubeye (2006) 4.5/10

Panda Bear: Person Pitch (2007) 7.5/10

Strawberry Jam (2007) 6.5/10

Merriweather Post Pavilion (2008) 6/10

Fall Be Kind (EP, 2009) 6/10

Avey Tare: Down There (2010) 6/10

Panda Bear: Tomboy (2010) 6/10

Centipede Hz (2012) 4.5/10

Slasher Flicks: Enter the Slasher House (2014) 4.5/10

Panda Bear: Meets the Grim Reaper (2014) 5/10

Painting with (2015) 4/10

Deakin: Sleep Cycle (2015) 5/10

Avey Tare: Eucalyptus (2017) 5/10

Tangerine Reef (2018) 4/10

Avey Tare: Cows on Hourglass Pond (2018) 5.5/10

Panda Bear: Buoys (2019) 3.5/10

Bridge to Quiet (EP, 2020) 4.5/10

Time Skiffs (2022) 5.5/10

Avey Tare: 7s (2023) 5.5/10

Isn't It Now? (2023) 5/10

   Members Name Key:

• • David Portner — "Avey Tare"

  • Noah Lennox — "Panda Bear"

  • Josh Dibb — "Deakin"

  • Brian Weitz — "Geologist"

   In Baltimore County, the members of Animal Collective gradually met each other in elementary, middle, and high school; although Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) would move away to Pennsylvania after the eighth grade.

   Brian Weitz and David Portner (Geologist and Avey Tare) first started playing music together at fifteen, then formed the band Automine with Josh Dibb (Deakin) and two other schoolmates to release only one record in 1995. 

   Automine's Padington Band EP works as a slowcore interpretation of Pavement, among other influences of the lo-fi aesthetic. 

   Around this time, band members would take psychedelics for the first time. Soon after, their back-porch sets began to involve much improvisation with electronic instruments. Weitz and Portner would even form an electronic duo known as Wendy Darling, whose music would be derivative of horror synth. 

   Members would attend their separate colleges, Portner and Weitz in New York City, while Dibb would reunite with Lennox in Boston. Here Lennox and Dibb would assemble the debut of Lennox's moniker Panda Bear, releasing his first LP through a label the two of them would start independently, Soccer Star Records. 

   Campfire Songs was recorded studio-live with overdubs of nature sounds. The long recessions of acoustic chords become a hypnotic sort of drone replete with murmured vocal accompaniment. 

   Panda Bear's mini-LP Young Prayer was a tribute to his dying father. It basically sounds like outtakes from Campfire Songs most of the time, although the lack of much (or any) accompaniment to Panda Bear's lone performances gives it a more intimate atmosphere than any other Animal Collective release. 

   In 2016 the band recorded the single Mountain Game for the video game Red Dead Redemption. The developers (Rockstar Games) rejected the song for obvious reasons: the game warranted acoustic western music, or sounds reminiscent of Ennio Morricone, not electronic fusion/art pop. 

   Recorded in the absence of Panda Bear (replaced by the "art-science duo" Coral Morphologic), Tangerine Reef resurrected much of the abstract and tribal atmosphere from Here Comes the Indian and Danse Manatee, but hesitates in being as dense or spontaneous as either. The album's biggest deficiency is the melodies, assuming the vocals are intended to deliver any melody at all. 

   The vocals might as well have been spoken word or spontaneous primal-scream rambling, as displayed on Hair Cutter and Coral Understanding. A collaboration with Xiu Xiu or a similar group would have been fitting given the post-industrial aesthetic — the distorted samples, electric shocks, and pattering loop on Buffalo Tomato like a mellow Einsturzende Neubauten; the rhythmic slams and hissing on Coral By Numbers; the aimless guitar on Airpipe with delay effects reminiscent of Royal Trux, plus the bouncing percussion in the track's last quarter.