Animal Collective – Centipede Hz

Animal Collective – Centipede Hz (Domino Records)

While preparing the follow-up to their landmark 2009 album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, vocalist Panda Bear says, ‘We were throwing around the idea that there could be this alien band hearing bits of sound coming from the Earth, and then thinking about what sounds an alien band would make.’ In realising this concept on Centipede Hz, Avey Tare and Panda Bear take on the role of the alien vocalists, their joyous harmonies and childlike words imposing some extraterrestrial sense of order to scrambled and smashed sounds lovingly collected from the ether.  Every time I hear a new Animal Collective album, my brain has to relearn how to experience music, and Centipede Hz affirms that like the universe to which their music is transmitted, the lessons Animal Collective have to teach my ears are seemingly infinite.