Animal Collective re-release experimental album Campfire Songs

Baltimore's Animal Collective re-release third album Campfire Songs in the UK.

Animal Collective descended on musos as anti-musicians who strive to fuck with your mind and defy everything you thought you knew about music. Their second Domino release in 2009 and eighth studio album Merriweather Post Pavilion, is a masterpiece of disjointed strangeness that would make Syd Barrett proud.

This five-track album had its initial release in 2003 on Fat Cat Records and is now set to be re-released in the UK after picking up an army of British fans since signing to uber-cool label Domino.

Queens In My Pictures is the opening track and a bit of a slow starter and slow finisher. I had trouble hearing the first three minutes and got quite bored, it was a track that never went anywhere and failed to excite. Its interesting strums and mind-bending noises was enough to keep me intrigued, but I felt somewhat disappointed when it just petered out.

Moving onto Doggy, I was hoping for a track that would move the album on. It was much in the same vein as the first track; however, I loved the raw edginess of the distant vocals that soundef like it was recorded in a bathroom. This is perfect easy-listening, for those who turn their backs on the likes of Celine Dion et al.

Track three, Two Corvettes, is a direct follow-on from the previous song. In fact, it sounds a lot like the same song. It adds to the synergy of the album, but doesn't offer anything different.

It wasn’t until I heard Moo Rah Rah Rain that the penny dropped – throughout the entire album you could hear a faint and distant sound of rain falling and this track opens with the sound of a dog barking (looks at the title for track two). The band are great with this type of music making, not really heard in albums but championed by The Beatles where snippets of previous tracks are used in other songs, bringing the whole album together and completing it as a body of work in its entirety. These tracks aren’t stand alone; it is an experimental concept album where only listening to the whole album do the tracks make sense. Cue final track Do Soto de Rain and it all falls into place.

I really like Animal Collective, more because they produce music that is exciting and raises the bar. They are to the 21st Century what Velvet Underground were to the 20th. The extent of my knowledge of them only goes as far back as 2007 with the release of Strawberry Jam, where in my opinion the band came into their own. As with all good bands that live music, it is in them to experiment with all music styles, this album is a testament to that working ethos.

Campfire Songs isn’t what you would expect from Animal Collective but at the same time it is. It meets up to its title. It takes me to a beach in San Francisco surround by white people with dreadlocks, getting stoned on skunk and opium while sitting round a campfire stringing out long-winded songs that never go anywhere, but at the time you think it’ll be the song that brings world peace.

They have turned the boring and saturated genre of acoustic on its head and made it as experimental, interesting and alternative as they can. Not sure where this album would be best placed, it’s definitely not Sunday morning with the papers and a coffee album (that slot is reserved for Nick Drake or Joni Mitchell), it’s not background music (that slot is reserved for Norah Jones and Dido – for people that don’t really like music, but pretend to) and it’s not beautiful enough to be an album to court a lover to (that slot is reserved for Squarepusher… No?... Just me then?).