Panda Bear, Avey Tare, Deakin and Geologist are back in the form of the new Animal Collective record Painting With. On this new LP, the band goes all in with their maximalist approach to experimental pop, which makes for overwhelming soundscapes, but a truly underwhelming album.
Animal Collective has always been about exploring boundaries of music. Despite having the “pop” label, they have actively combated popular conventions of music. Their sound resembles a pop song disassembled inside a blender, and then reassembled into something completely unique.
This formula has found the group massive critical success in the past with releases such as Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post Pavilion, as the band was able to create sounds that were equally challenging as they were catchy.
In many ways, the band’s “blender” formula is still present on Painting With. Unfortunately, this time around, it feels like someone forgot to put the lid on the blender, and the end product is just a mess.
The disarray of the album is due to questionable choices in mixing. All the songs on this LP have a massive amount of bright and kooky instrumentation — there are spiraling synths, chaotic woodwinds and bouncing grooves. On the vast majority of these tracks, however, an obnoxious low end muddies the instrumentation.
Songs such as “Hocus Pocus,” “Lying In the Grass” and “Natural Selection” all feature a wobbly distorted sub bass synth that masks all the other instrumentations in the mix. It sucks the life out of the eccentric and vivacious background instrumentation. Perhaps Animal Collective was trying to establish a cohesive aesthetic with the low end on this record, but it just leads to songs that feel flat and monotonous.
Another mixing misstep on this album lies in the presentation of the vocals, put at the forefront of every mix. They’re loud and in your face, which would be okay if it wasn’t for how vexing the vocal performances on this album are.
The vocal presentations on Painting With are dizzying and often lead to sensory overload. The harmonies pan with violent perpetuity to create the feeling the voices are surrounding the listener.
It’s nothing new for Animal Collective, but in older albums, this vocal presentation always acted as the punctuation rather than the sentence. With the vocals so prevalent, it makes some songs feel not just monotonous, but annoying.
That said, the album isn’t a complete train wreck. The two singles released prior to Painting With, “FloriDada” and “Golden Gal,” both act as remnants of what this album could have been. They both feature the eccentric vocal presentation and instrumentation of the other songs, but they’re mixed in a way far more palatable than the other uninspired tracks on Painting With.
One can compare Animal Collective’s LP to the way a painter mixes numerous colors to achieve the exact chromatic shade they desire. If a painter mixes too many colors, however, they can end up with a brown that can muddy the final product — and on Painting With, it sounds like Animal Collective is painting with a whole lot of brown.
