Review Summary: Animal Collective’s new outing sees them retreat even further into the comforts of their colorful psych pop tapestry.
Long gone are the days of the freak folk Animal Collective, where a fervent, chaotic energy pervaded even their mellowest tracks. But you already knew that. That Animal Collective has been missing for quite some time, actually. Some would even argue as far back as 2005’s Feels. That album seemed to kick start a new era for the band; one where they would pull more from psych pop and electronic sounds. Done poorly, this could have spelled disaster, but the collective showed that they were more than capable of transitioning their sound. Even with albums that I personally didn’t love (Merriweather Post Pavilion, Centipede Hz), I could at least understand their appeal. They were messy, noisy, surreal, and abstract, while also maintaining a playful, melodic veneer on the outside.
There have been so many ups and downs since then, that it would be impossible to list them all here. From the sporadic quality of the group members’ solo work to the band’s insistence on releasing film scores instead of proper albums to their EPs that ranged from decent (The Painters, Bridge to Quiet) to their best work in years (Meeting of the Waters). It was this instability, this unease, that made 2022’s Time Skiffs such an obvious play. It seemed to act as a reaffirmation of the band’s most successful, popular era. A sign to their audience to show that they hadn’t completely lost their collective voice.
So when I say that Isn’t It Now?, their latest release, is “just okay,” know that I say that with some level of understanding. Time Skiffs was a relative success: why not do that again? It just makes sense. Who am I to look down upon a band making a good record? That sort of thinking would’ve been alright after one or two underwhelming releases. It’s taken me this long to realize it, but it’s been almost a full 15 years since this group has released a full-length, non-soundtrack album that has stuck with me past a few weeks. This new album is just another confirmation that Animal Collective is more than content with playing it safe than truly breaking out of this rut they’ve pigeonholed themselves into.
Their most recent foray sees them take bits and pieces of their last 25 years together and blends them together into this soupy mid-tempo psych/ambient/dub pop mush. Opener “Soul Capturer” has everything an AnCo fan could ever want. It has layers upon layers of lush instrumentation and vocal harmonizing. It has acoustic guitars strumming along. It even has some distorted vocal shenanigans. It’s an overall pleasant listen. But as an opener, I could not ask for a weaker first impression. The whole album seems to wade in this more laid-back malaise, which I understand is the point. But there is so little to grasp onto on this album. Even songs that I would consider stand-outs (“Magicians From Baltimore,” “Stride Rite”) very rarely break away from the peace. A track most point to as a clear point of interest is the 22-minute behemoth “Defeat,” which is so bogged down in new age-y ambient drone that it’s hard to even pick out an interesting phrase from it. At least on their last big ambient record (the film score Tangerine Reef), there was a concept of underwater surrealism. This album has nothing of the sort. As far as I can tell, the only concept for this album was “good vibes.” Which just doesn’t make for an interesting album, quite frankly.
What I will say in Isn’t It Now?’s favor is that nothing on this is overtly offensive to the ears. There are a few low points, like the repetitive “Gem & I” or the indie disco(?) of “All the Clubs Are Broken,” but those are far from the group’s lowest moments over their long history together. Like I said when describing “Soul Capturer,” it’s an overall pleasant listen. But that pleasantness also the album’s greatest flaw. How long has it been since Animal Collective put out a release that was doing more than affirming their past greatness? At what point did they become something you could put on for your grandparents safely instead of having it befuddle and confuse them? I wasn’t just bemoaning the demise of freak folk AnCo to grab people’s attention. It was to remind people that this group, this collective, used to be bizarre. And seeing them sink into that colorful, patterned blanket to pull something this tepid out just seems like a waste of perfectly good fabric.
