Despite the self-propagated rumours that blog-magnet bro band Animal Collective were taking “a break”, central band member Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) has conceded that they are recording new music right now.
In a recent interview he told Exclaim!: “We’re working actually right now”, adding that the band have been writing together since January. “We’ve never had so much time to work on songs before, so it’s kind of new, unchartered territory in a way.”
He spoke about the band’s somewhat unconventional recording process saying, “We had to kind of prepare before we would get in a room together because we’re living all over the place… That’s why we wanted a lot of time to be able to make it happen and we really wanted to do the whole process in a different way than we’re used to.” .
Animal Collective played a set at Coachella where their performance was panned because of an absence of hooks and “hits”. The Los Angeles Times music blogger Margaret Wrappler wrote:
Animal Collective does have actual songs with beginnings, middles and ends, but you wouldn’t have known it from Saturday night. Verse-chorus-verse sticklers were out of luck. Then again, you don’t see Animal Collective with the hope that it’ll cover a Mumford and Sons song.
Sometimes a song would start, only to transport into the next by way of burbling passage, as if being ferried from one stalagmited cave to another.
“Didn’t these guys used to do stuff with their voices that was, um, pretty?”
Are Animal Collective “over”?
