Artist: Animal Collective
Venue: Webster Hall, NYC, NY
Date: November 20, 2005
I walk in as the opening band is starting. It’s two dudes dressed in shiny clothes behind two turntables and a microphone. They put on this decent beat, and start saying “yeah, uh-huh, yeah” while they’re bobbing their heads.
Cut to thirty minutes later: I’m gouging my eyes out with the bloody remains of my ears, which I ripped off 25 minutes ago with my bare hands, as the two dudes have still not really done anything. They still have the same beat going, with some lame electronic effects (ooh it’s reverb and flange!!), and their lyrical prowess has been now complemented with a fog machine doing its best to shield the audience from the magnitude of the suck. This does not bode well.
Cut to an hour later: Animal Collective is on, and although they have more than 2 dudes, they’re actually playing instruments, they have some good set design in the background, and yet they’re doing something very similar. It’s just noise with nonsense lyrics/yelling/chanting that goes on for a long time and then morphs to some similar-sounding noise. Half the audience is groaning and thinking about committing seppuku with their ticket stubs while the other half looks like it’s receiving the holy word of God straight from Her mouth.
Cut to five minutes before the end of the show: They have yet to play a single song from their old album (their new album was just released a few days ago and I haven’t yet heard it), when suddenly, I hear what might possibly have been the chorus to one of their old songs. It’s not quite clear, but I think it was. My mission here is done: I have heard the “brilliance” of their music live, where it has been irrepairably damaged beyond belief compared to the amazing studio recording that was Sung Tongs. What a waste.
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