Animal Collective - People (Australian Tour EP)

      This limited tour edition EP from New York Psych-Folk-Noise guys Animal Collective features new, reworked, and live tracks found nowhere else.

      The first track is a live favorite from the past tour called People. In a way it's like Banshee Beat from their last album Feels. It's got a slow building almost droning crescendo throughout the song with the hop skipping piano lines ontop. It becomes more and more frantic but then rather than having a big boom ending it fades away. I was slightly disappointed by this fact.

      Then comes Tikwid, another new song. Tikwid is much more discordant than the previous track. It's got a great vibe to it. It's upbeat and mysterious. Avey twirls through lines and lines of vocals in a much shorter time than normal. At time there are thoughts of the Feel's single "Grass".

      Then there's My Favorite Colors, an older song that has been re-done for this EP. It's a short song with a feeling sort of like "College" from Sung Tongs. It's not quite a filler but not quite a song. There are some great sounds i.e. Avey's distored tremeloing vocals layered and layered. The vocals are such a vital part of the song dispite having absolutely no lyrics, simply the sound of Avey's moans and slow yelps slowly fading away.

      And finally a live version of People. Animal Collective record every show they play and have a huge library of minidiscs. It doesn't say exactly what show this is from, all we know is it's from the shows this year when they began playing it. It's a lot less overlapping than the studio version what with it being live and so parts stick out a lot more rather than get lost in the song. The drums are especially poignant in this. The piano part though is missing in this version, and I miss it.

      Overall, great EP. If you loved Feels you'll love this. If you think Feels was a bit too poppy and you're more for their older stuff you just might like this too. It seems that they're going with a good combination of both the eras. Great things can definately be expected from their upcoming 2007 album.

Paw-Tracks (Animal Collective's Label) | Animal Collective on Myspace | Pre-Order People EP