Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Song of the Day #231 - Animal Collective - Brothersport

OPEN UP YA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEzPId5AGpM

Alright so I might have stepped over the line slightly when I said in my Flockaveli 1.5 review that I was more excited about getting a non-128kbps version of that than I was the new AnCo album. That was uhh hyperbole. There is nothing more exciting than a new AnCo album. The release cycle before a new one is the most "what a time to be alive" feeling that you can get in music. There's the confidence that it will be GOOD. But also the thrill that it could be ANYTHING. I've talked about this with CentiHurtz, and Strawberry Jam was one of the first albums I can remember f5ing for (what a glorious leak that was!) but the real beast was the run-up to MPP. I didn't blog much back then, I think this is the only thing where I wrote about it, but I was on /mu/ all day every day spreading dank memes and downloading mislabeled fake leaks and the whole time my soundtrack was the promotional 30 second samples of "Bluish" and "Also Frightened" that had been released, on loop, until they're still engraved onto my brain, almost seven years later.

And then BROTHER SPORT LEAKED, by far the most anticipated track via it being the finale, and bootlegs of live performances, and such. And all day every day there would be a thread or two with the album art and just "JAM OF A LIFETIME", and they would all get 300 replies of people agreeing that yes this is the jam of a lifetime. /mu/ was a different place back then. Now when I go there I see only a couple threads discussing the new album (which is apparently called Painting With?), and new threads are told to fold into them and die out. "There's already a thread about this!"?? what is this attitude?? This is the attitude of a 4chan board being seen as a place where specific discussions are guaranteed to be available to you, instead of just an endless tide of the whims of the most dedicated posters. This is a good and bad change.

Of course, the circumstances are fairly different too. Instead of lead singles and previews and stuff, they're just... playing the album on loop at an airport? So we're getting a bunch of impressions by people who are either lying or spoiling it for me, plus a bunch of shitty cellphone recordings that I don't want to hear. I might just chill out on it until the whole album, or at least a proper single, is available. It seems like it won't be long. I kinda feel like I'm missing out on the fun of the hype but as long as I'm recording publicly my feeling of missing out it feels okay (I'm unsure if it makes sense to feel okay, but it feels okay).

I think though if something like "Brothersport" had emerged, if a SECOND JAM OF A LIFETIME had been created (impossible!), we'd see /mu/ in glorious memetic overload like the good old days. This song is GIGANTIC. How can I possibly overstate the quality of this song when it is a proven fact that it is the jam of a lifetime? Does it say something that, besides the Childish Gambino tracks that my friend played on repeat to ruin my last.fm account (I explain this more here), "Brothersport" is the most played song? No, it really doesn't, because that doesn't account for the time I spent listening to it on my iPod, or on my phone, or in my head (the majority of the last seven years).

This song is about how Panda Bear's dad died, and he's trying to help his brother out of the rut that his passing had left him in. This is done in typical AnCo fashion: a dual attack of memorializing that focuses on how the departed would not want you to just memorialize for the rest of your life. You gotta GIVE A REAL SHOUT OUT. And everything is a jam. Six sections, all of them jams. Most songs are like some jam in a delicious pastry. This is just SIX LAYERS OF JAM, suspended in a magical sphere. If that doesn't sound like the most delicious shit ever I don't know what to say you just don't know AnCo. They play with the similarity in sound between "support brother" and "sport brother" and it's the most beautiful thing ever when you remember that their first record label was called "Soccer Star Records". And then they call out "Matt!" which is Noah's brother's name and that's even more beautiful. Do you know what sort of world could support the idea that you are coming to terms with the loss of your father with your dear brother by writing the jam of a lifetime? A true and loving world.

OH ALSO we haven't done this in awhile but the tracklist for Painting With is out, so let's SPECULATE almost ENTIRELY BASELESSLY about what the songs will be like.

1. "FloriDada"
This will be like... some real flower explosion stuff. Lots of weird samples. Like world's end girlfriend maybe. Will definitely feel "Dadaist" but "swampy".

2. "Hocus Pocus"
Spooky sorta song. Fun jam. Maybe a bit like Unsolved Mysteries? Somewhere between that and Flesh Canoe?

3. "Vertical"    
Hmm... very experimental I think. Pure sound sort of thing. Like one of Aphex Twin's short weird tracks.

4. "Lying in the Grass"    
Happy, relaxing, slow burner sorta jam. Like What Would I Want? Sky ideally. Damn that song is so good. Wow what an amazing band.

5. "The Burglars"    
Uhh geez, this is a weird sort of title. Makes me just think of Venetian Snares so uhh I'm guessing something super noisy and aggressive. And uhhh Avey will yelp a lot.

6. "Natural Selection"  
Hmm maybe something along the lines of Panda Bear's "Selfish Gene"? heheh. A neat sort of "emerging jam" would be cool, with lots of shifting changes.
 
7. "Bagels in Kiev"    
UHHH gosh I have no idea. OH maybe y'know how on PBMTGR, at the start of "Tropic of Cancer", there's that foreboding "Last Post"-esque trumpet, and then a rich sort of "fairyland" sound? That's what I want.

8. "On Delay"    
Hmmm... another short sound experiment sort of thing, I bet. I kinda hope some of these tracks are short because others I hope will be really long.

9. "Spilling Guts"    
CAN GO TWO WAYS: either a heartfelt somber discussion of their personal lives, or a wacky Avey-driven b-horror sorta jam.

10. "Summing the Wretch"    
SUPER DARK AND SWAMPY AF i hope. Like ODDSAC or Down There, but even MORE SWAMP. Like Lake of the Dead.

11. "Golden Gal"    
A super spaced out glorious happy jam like Chocolate Girl way back on (true masterpiece imo fite me STGSTV). hopefully no less than 15 minutes long.

12. "Recycling"  
In the interest of jam conservation, this song will just be "Brothersport" again.

DO I HEAR AOTY CALLING? Oh wait yeah Divers. Oh and almost certainly a 2016 release. Right right.

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