Impose Magazine

Scene and Heard

Animal Collective at The Metro, Chicago IL

Photos by Will Deitz » When we last encountered Animal Collective, the band was performing before Radiohead but after Metric on Saturday at the All Points West Music Festival. Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist accomplished the Herculean feat of exciting a crowd that appeared overanxious to see Thom Yorke & Co. take the stage. Though not quite ruling the day, psychedelic indie drone-pop made its mark on five thousand, fidgeting New Yorkers. 

Text by Will Deitz
Posted on January 26, 2009

Six months later, Merriweather Post Pavilion has dropped like so many gallons of napalm. Animal Collective’s show at the Metro last Thursday sold out quickly, with tickets going for as much as $300 on Craigslist the day of the performance. It almost makes sense (but not really), because this is the tour where Animal Collective answers the question: “You’re really that big of a deal?” If last Thursday’s show at the Metro is any indication, the answer seems to be yes.

AC began their 75 minute set with Merriweather’s “Lion In A Coma”, losing the album version's meticulously enunciated refrain in favor of coarseness, speed, and urgency, which welcome to the 1,100 stoners - that is, concertgoers - in attendance. The show moved at a decent clip, with other highlights “My Girls” and “Summertime Clothes”, featuring a floor full of twenty-somethings hilariously throwing themselves about like styrofoam in front of a leaf blower. Everyone was thrilled to be there – the walls were rattling, and no wavelength of sound was passed over.

How did Animal Collective – who have been hanging around for almost a decade – come to be at the cutting edge of indie experimental noise pop? It might, in fact, take as long as a decade to tell whether Animal Collective is the real deal or the emperor's new clothes, but it all looks good in Chicago.

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