Dublin Opinion

About a year ago I put on a CD single that I’d bought for a euro a year before on a whim in Freebird records. I hadn’t heard any of this band’s music although the name was naggingly familiar. It was one of those promo singles that Irish distributors give to music journalists with a rude white sticker on the cover filled with heady critical reviews which told the uninitiated journo or radio ‘jock’ just how bonkers brilliant this band was.

On the cover was the side profile of a man dressed up as a white rabbit, with sharp menacing discoloured teeth spewing out fluffy letters which spelled out the name of the band. For me, the image was both sweet and nightmarish. Sweet because it suggested fluffy white rabbits jumping lithely around the field, but nightmarish not only because of the overtones of Donnie Darko, but also because it suggested to me the vision of a man-sized rabbit with sharpened teeth ready to leap out at me from behind a wheeling bin whenever I pop out to the shop for a litre of milk late in the evening. Not that I believe such creatures exist, but I still can’t help keeping an eye out for incongruous white furriness whenever I go down a darkened street.

Anyway, having owned this single for a while I put it on, and knowing that this band was critically hip, which is usually a prerequisite of the music I enjoy listening to, I expected to like it.

The song was called Who Could Win a Rabbit and the band was Animal Collective and is taken from the album Sung Tongs. Here it is….[thanks to music slut]

 

 Who Could Win a Rabbit: Play Now | Play in Popup

Well, I played it three times and at the end of the third listening I had to admit that I hated it.

‘What the hell is this noise?’; ‘what were those critics thinking’; ‘this is the Emperor’s new clothes, surely?’; ‘I’ll have nothing to do with this Animal Collective’; ‘I wouldn’t even touch one of their records with a marauder’s cudgel’. These were my thoughts.

And then I heard Person Pitch the solo album by Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox, who goes by the name Panda Bear (that’s the link to tracks on hypemachine) and it has to be the best album I’ve heard all year. So when songs from Strawberry Jam started to appear across the music blogs I decided to have a listen and next thing you know I’m a fan, putting Reverend Green and Derek on repeat, thinking Fireworks is the best song of the year, stuff like that.

Also, as I listened more I started to realize that my reaction to the cover art, the suggestion of sweetness mixed with the manic (or maniacal), was actually a very good description of the music. What I like about them now is the twisted use of pop harmonies and effects, the taking of common enough melody types from the likes of the Beach Boys and elongating and distorting them out of recognition. There is an inventiveness that keeps the sounds interesting without descending into self-indulgent experimentation, although at times it gets dangerously close. But over all there is a passion in songs such as Fireworks and Peacebone which manages to make all the disparate musical elements, from samplers, keyboards, decks or whatever else comes to hand, just gel. In my humble opinion, at least.

And although I don’t go to gigs at all these days I got tickets to go see them in the Tripod this Sunday (4th of Nov).

So, to whet my appetite today for the forthcoming live experience I had a look around at what’s available on the net. And here’s what I found.

There’s a stream from NPR of an excellent live show recorded in September ‘07 in Washington DC and following are a bunch of live recordings taken from shows they played late last year and earlier on this year.

Two from Midi Festival 27-28th of July 2007

Tasty Place / Material Things

Peace Bone at Malta Festival

Reverend Green at T in the Park 2006

Derek - Webster Hall NYC, January 2007

According to this reviewof a recent show they’re still playing Who Could Win a Rabbit. Just hope there’s no sinister-looking men dressed up in bunny suits in the audience.

Sinéad Gleeson has a very good review of Strawberry Jam and Nialler9 has some vids of live performances of Reverend Green and other Strawberry Jam tracks from 2005