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May 19, 2005

the most important lie I've ever told

Animal Collective - Hollinndagain - (Forest Gospel/There's an Arrow/Lablakely Dress/Tell It to the Mountain/Pumpkin Gets a Snakebite)

More Animal Collective, but this time, it's a live album (Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist on tour)! "Hollinndagain" was released in 2002 on Secretly Canadian's ridiculously small-run (300 copies per pressing) vinyl-only label, St. Ives (who also pressed that Microphones mini-LP "Blood" back in the day). As you might have guessed, this album is so out-of-print it's not even funny (which is why the entirety of Side 2 is today's download), and there's been no talk of reissuing it, so if you see an album for sale with a cover that looks like the one at left, buy it and run (interesting thing about the LP art- they took Simon Joyner covers, turned them inside out, and cut patterns into them).

One of the many great things about this band is the way they perform live, which I know I've mentioned before, but it really is pretty remarkable- this is what Noah (Panda Bear) said about it (taken from this awesome interview in Eye magazine), and I think it captures the whole thing pretty well:

"We'd like for people to come to our show and feel really good and energized," says Noah, who's also just released a Panda Bear solo album, Young Prayer, a solemn song-cycle that serves as a sort of precursor to Sung Tongs' explosive canon. "We'd like to fill them with positive energy with our playing. I think when we do it right we go deep inside ourselves when we play and I'd like to encourage people to do the same sort of thing with their stuff, even if it's not music at all. Mostly we'd like people to have a good time and to feel strong."

There is something already intrinsically euphoric about the band's music, but when you see them play it out live, it's just overpowering. From what Noah says, it sounds like they've never had a cavalier attitude with respect to playing live- it's not a chore for them in any way, but something they look forward to doing.

The tracks on "Hollinndagain" were taken from various live performances during the "Spirit They've Gone/Spirit They've Vanished"/"Danse Manatee" era ('Lablakely Dress' is on "Danse Manatee"). 'Forest Gospel' starts with a full-out percussion assault from Panda Bear and some sort of free-form vocals from the band. The first understandable lyrics sound like (but are not), "Calling my best friend, Jesus" (which I always thought was weird, coming from Animal Collective)- in reality, Avey Tare is apparently saying something like, "only my best friends use the coke...pipe...crack...ready" (which, um, makes a little more sense, I guess). The next section features a nice build-up with Avey chanting, "pow, all you need is a nick, you pull out the prick, you pull out the stick". A lot of this stuff is way more in line with the lulls/explosions of "Here Comes the Indian"- it's harsher and heavier even than that album, but there are some extremely pretty moments throughout (as usual).

With any luck, Animal Collective will put out another live album someday soon. In the meantime, you can count on not being able to buy "Hollinndagain" anywhere (although it does supposedly pop up on Ebay every once in a while), but take solace in the fact that it's pretty readily available on slsk. Whew.

Posted by Kevin at May 19, 2005 09:15 AM

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Comments

Posted by: darryl at May 19, 2005 05:40 PM

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