Album of the Week: Animal Collective, 'Painting With'
February 29, 2016
Painting With is a new album from Animal Collective, which will speak multitudes, regardless of your specific feelings on the band Animal Collective. The band have steadily racked up a lion's share of divisive feelings over the last several years, to the point where I can reliably expect listener feedback every time I play one of their songs on the radio. These charged emotions have grown in number in inverse proportion to the acclaim that was so readily doled out in the band's first decade of existence; their high-water mark was the 2009 record Merriweather Post Pavilion, which befuddlingly became a critics' consensus as one of the best records *anyone* had thus produced in the 21st century. As the love began to winnow away and the criticisms began to mount, would Painting With mark a reinvention, or a reinvigoration?
The hallmark of any Animal Collective record is a sea of instruments, awash in reverb, at best coalescing into pretty sounds, at worse thudding into redundant noise. The band's blend of voices is layered over the top; lest there be any doubt one is listening to Animal Collective, the familiar voices of Panda Bear and Avey Tare are always a bracing sensation. Painting With features these signature elements in a consistent fashion over 41 minutes, which does not leave much room for innovation but is at least impressive in keeping Animal Collective sounding like Animal Collective.
A band that consistently sounds like itself is a double-edged sword: while this familiarity allows a band to settle into its own skin and reliably produce works consistent with its history, it also bears the risk of beginning to grow stale. One senses that bands like Beach House or the National have arrived at this point; after releasing excellent albums, it's entirely plausible that these artists will, out of necessity, take a step in another direction. In the similar case of Dr. Dog, the band turned their eye inward in re-recording their first studio record, making a record that sounds like quintessential Dr. Dog, but is at least interesting on an archaeological basis. Painting With, alas, fails to engage as effectively as any of the other bands noted — it will do little to win over longtime skeptics, and will do little to win back longtime fans of the band.