I don't think many will be surprised to find that “Centipede Hz” is a vastly different album than “Merriweather Post Pavilion.” Animal Collective has always taken great care not to repeat themselves, so fans hoping for lush harmonies and synth arpeggios in the vein of “My Girls” will be sorely disappointed.
While its predecessor traded in warmth and celebration, “Centipede Hz” is about discomfort and estrangement — the white noise blasts of “Moonjock,” the tongue-tied shudders of “Monkey Riches” — nearly everything here is deployed with an eye towards maximum ruckus. In terms of sonics, the group's backdrops are just as wonderfully jagged and disorienting as the cover art. However, problems arise when the band tries to trap this spiky energy into the confines of a pop song.
Despite all of its inventive rhythms and pirouetting synth figures, “Applesauce” is too busy and too cluttered to make sense of. If the group was trying to make a more oblique psych album, this would be quite a welcome development. However, the prevalent melody and attention to song structure indicates that they're at least trying to meet their listeners halfway.
Unfortunately, so many of these tunes weave and wander past the five-minute mark without focus or direction.
Even some of the best tracks suffer from lack of concision. The chilling string and the gaping melody of “New Town Burnout” exudes a sort of bewildered longing, but after the near-transcendent instrumental break, vocalist Panda Bear starts to repeat himself. Still, his willingness to relax and let the foreboding setting work its magic is an asset the surrounding pieces would do well to steal.
In keeping with the album's cacophonous nature, Avey Tare's forceful bleating is the sound we hear most often behind the microphone. The single “Today's Supernatural” is a fairly impressive vehicle for his oral tricks and twists, featuring a rapid-fire vocal hook and some careening screams that disturb the sweeping organ just enough. But just like the previous track, he has no idea where to take the bridge and gets lost in aimless pulse and doodle.
It's probably a bit perverse to wish an Animal Collective album to be further removed from convention. After all, people were drooling over “Merriweather Post Pavilion” precisely because it tempered their wildness with cozy MIDI samples with echoes of The Beach Boys. But throughout its overlong 55-minute duration, “Centipede Hz” struggles to balance tunefulness with abstraction — the former is sullied by the relentless clamor and listless compositional focus, while the latter is burdened with intrusive melodies that rarely seem sure of what they're doing.
To be sure, there are still substantial moments of joy amid the skittishness. “Wide Eyed” is Deakin's first solo vocal and the album's peak — the only track to achieve a sense of unity between the two poles. Otherwise, “Centipede Hz” is too jumbled to bring about the lysergic visions commonly associated with its creators.
Reach the reporter at tjgreene@asu.edu
