"My name is Otto and I love to get blotto"

Animal Collective
Feels (Fat Cat)

For about 45 minutes today, life was in fast forward. Frantically, I drove from work to the my registered polling place in Oakland, then rushed down the supermarket aisles to hunt down dinner and raced back to the Lower Haight to find prime parking before everyone else snatched it all up. Finding parking in the city is finding love.

Then when the rush was over, things got incredibly slow. I trudged down the hallway like a sloth, my internet connection ran like a 28.8 modem and for some reason my phone kept freezing and shutting on and off. I crawled into bed for my daily afternoon nap, put on Animal Collective's new album Feels, and the world made sense. Sort of.

Actually, Feels has been my bus riding music for the greater part of October and it seems apt. Riding the bus can be a colorful and excrutiating experience all at once. In one regard, you're in the weird world, surrounded by strange sights, smells and people. And I like to gawk ("people watch" for the gawkers in denial). In another regard, you are a victim of the system of tardy rides, transfers that don't last nearly long enough and the fear that you might be stuck until the universe ends or your El Farolito quesdilla gets cold. Either way, you're shit outta luck. Furthermore, you see your bus going the other way every 12 minutes, yet, you're standing there on the other side looking like an asshole.

Animal Collective with their last few releases have made this feeling an art. Feels follows the same path as its predecessors but with less pyschotic stab-yourself-in-the-neck of insane boredom moments.

Don't get me wrong, the fellas from Brooklyn are one of my favorites, and one of the brilliant things about them is their most amazing, high-fiving numbers surround and corner the repetitively lobotomizing slow and aimless ones. And through osmosis and some sort of aural vicatin, ease the pain.

The album opens with two of the most amazing tracks Avey and Panda have ever released. "Did You See the Words" rides a raucous drum beat and host of voices, over a comically lilting piano. This, my friends, is pop bliss in its most raw and beautifully awkwardly-attractive form. "Grass" continues this ridiculous melody explosion and defaces it with jarring shrieks and crashing cymbals in the chorus. I liken it being stabbed by Brian Wilson, which would be a fantastic way to die.

From there, you find respite with the reverb-y, delay-heavy, grossly-named "Flesh Canoe". The track gently rocks back and forth like a drunken tide, while you wade in its sonic murkiness. Right when you think your fingers are getting pruney, they thrust you right into "The Purple Bottle", a frantically percussive shout along.

While the hoe-down "Turn Into Something" is the only other upbeat song on Feels, AC has really grasped melody in their atmospheric experiments. "Banshee Beat" is a tremendously awesome track that sort of floats with grace and precision. Clickity clacks follow a gentle guitar rhythm, and slowly they crescendo with jungle noise vocals and thumping bass toms into a climax at a healthy 8 minutes. But dude, it really only feels like... I don't know... like 5-6 minutes. It's really amazing how much they've grown. I'm so proud of them. Honestly, "Bashee Beat" is a dream.

You know I was gona tie it all up and here it is: Feels is a bus ride. Some crazy is howling nonsense, you rarely feel a sense of balance and it reeks of something funky and weird. But along with this, comes the cute girls with ipods, laughing children and the gentle elderly humming a sweet tune. And best of all, you're going somewhere, moving right along. Something I can't say is really happening for me, right at this instance.

Animal Collective headlines the Great American Music Hall, 11/21/05. Get in there. Actually wait 'til I grab a ticket, then get in there. Seriously, just go see Tom Vek, and leave me alone.

Animal Collective: http://www.pawtracks.com
http://www.fat-cat.co.uk