The new Animal Collective album Tangerine Reef is just out and although the album lives up to the expectation of being weird and psychedelic, it’s also pretty dull.
The album opens with the strange and slightly meditative intro “Hair Cutter,” which is atmospheric and peaks our intrigue. The vocals are beautiful and melancholy, setting the tone of the album. Unfortunately, the intrigue peaks here, as the remaining tracks meander into more of the same, failing to keep the listener hooked.
“Coral Understanding” is the track where I realized I was pushing through the album rather than enjoying it. The synthy, atmospheric sounds would be tolerable if they were at least relaxing, yet instead they are disjointed and mostly unpleasant. The middle of the album sounds like someone put a Kraftwerk CD and a meditation track in a blender and then slowly poured out Tangerine Reef.
The album is the first without Panda Bear, who is working on his own, more calming solo works and perhaps this is what is missing from the record. I usually enjoy the weirdness of Animal Collective’s music but this time it seemed to be all the weird without the color, eccentricity and vibrancy.
That being said, it must be remembered that the album is the band’s second audiovisual record and this is how it is supposed to be consumed. The band teamed with Coral Morphologic to combine art and science by growing and photographing coral to accompany the music. Without the coral reefs that accompany the sound, it is clear that something is painfully missing.
In the context of the coral reef, however, the album has its redeemable features. The jarring, technological and dystopian sounds suit the destruction of the sea and the environment by humans. If we pair this review with how coral is being affected by human activity, the saddened, uncomfortable sound of the album starts to make sense. The final track “Best of Times (Worst of All)” fizzles out pitifully, the equivalent of the “whimper” that T.S. Eliot predicted for the end of the world in his poem The Hollow Men.
Overall, I don’t think I’ll be listening to Tangerine Reef again any time soon, but I can respect what the band is trying to do. Combined with the visuals, the album is significantly more powerful, yet the effect is almost entirely lost when you listen to the album on its own.
