Animal Collective – Koko, London 12/01/2009

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Photographs by Gregory Nolan

Animal Collective, thy name is pretension. Previously a niche concern, their star is in the ascendant with new LP Merriweather Post Pavillion already being hailed as an “Album of the Year” contender from mainstream and indie press alike. But the Baltimore-based avant garde psych-noise-pop outfit don’t make it easy for the audience at this much-anticipated release-date show, eliciting equal measures of bliss and bemusement with their relentless experimentalism.
Eschewing the normal approach to setlists, Animal Collective’s performances are an hour-and-a-half of almost uninterrupted music, songs flowing and merging into each other in a miasma of fragmentary sounds. They take a similarly unconventional approach towards the material itself; some songs remaining relatively faithful to their album incarnations, some twisted into entirely new forms. (Even the hardcore fans had trouble identifying a completely reworked ‘Winter’s Love’, which only lightly touched on the melodies of the original.) It’s an interesting approach which sometimes bears fruit but more than once you’d wish they’d quit faffing about and be a bit more straighforward.

Anyone whose ever listened to an AC album will be aware that they’re all about their thickly-layered slabs of psychedelia-infused noise. However, troubles with the bass amp coupled with the Koko’s inherent rubbishness meant the sound was never as dense as it should have been. The proggy, mystical ‘In the Flowers’ teased with almost-crescendos but it never captured that explosion of glitchy, glorious sound of the recorded version; the shimmering ‘My Girls’ similarly came close to brilliance but ached for a celebratory climax that never came. Rarely-played ‘Slippi’ was a lively and propulsive highlight, but the lack of Strawberry Jam material and a tendency to shift their more upbeat songs downtempo impacted on the show’s fun factor. Fugs of Deerhunter-ish melodic noise are fine (the languorous ‘Banshee Beat’ was a treat), but by underplaying the pop sensibilities that add a light-hearted edge to their self-indulgence, they squandered some of the performance’s potential. That said, ‘Lion In A Coma’ was fantastic, brought to life courtesy of Panda Bear’s impassioned military snare-drumming and day-glo album highlight ‘Brothersport’ was truly magnificent, a joyous distillation of AC’s fun side and the one moment where a nay-sayer may have been able to see what the fuss was all about.

An intense if unimaginative light-show added an effective visual element to the performance, but didn’t quite alleviate the perennial problem with electronics-based gigs: that watching three guys twiddle knobs (stop the sniggering back there) for 90 minutes isn’t the most engrossing experience in the world. Energy levels did pick up on the occasions they picked up actual instruments, or when Avey Tare unleashed his trademark full-throated guttural shrieks (sadly employed too rarely) but those expecting something life-changing (a feat the band achieved at Primavera, according to several of my acquaintances) will have left slightly underwhelmed. Sometimes excellent, often infuriating, but always intriguing, Animal Collective’s performance was certainly no big disappointment. But neither was it the celebration of their new-found success so many of us were expecting.