Animal Collective’s artsy, feverish bodies of work aren’t for everyone, but they tend to connect almost spiritually with those who can get on the same page. ‘A Shaw Deal’ dutifully expands the AnCo-verse along these lines, getting into tangled realms that rely entirely on feeling over meaning.
The record started life as a birthday gift from Animal Collective’s Geologist to Highlife’s Doug Shaw — the D.S. in the equation — wherein the former took the latter’s guitar work and fed it through synths and gizmos to create a sub-30 minute trip.
To give you an idea of what that means, the opener Route 9 Falls is bereft of rhythms or patterns, sounding more like rocks falling onto taut strings. It’s a grating, anxiety-inducing four minutes that makes or breaks the album depending on how it hits you.
If you’re open to the experimental, avant-garde, performance art nature of the track, then you’ll find more treasures housed within. If not, it may be time to turn around.
Those who push forward will be rewarded with a growing sense of discernible musicality, as Wit Of The Watermen and Loose Gravel introduce funk and grooves into the equation alongside Petticoat’s swirling mess of frantic, untethered energy.
Each track seems to strike a different tone, utterly chameleonic, and ‘A Shaw Deal’ ends with Avarice Edit, which strips away Geologist’s manipulations and leaves Shaw’s hypnotic guitar work to speak for itself. It’s a full circle moment that frames the album as an homage and a tribute from one musical hero to his own.
This is not for everyone, nor was it ever intended to be. A gift for a friend that became an experiment, it feels like its inexplicable wider release may serve only to serve the existing Animal Collective network.
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