Review Summary: Feeling is good.
Conveying emotion through sound is resoundingly difficult. At the heights of Feels' dizzying sublime, there are two exact moments in which that very thing happens on a blisteringly beautiful level.
These moments are very, very different.
The first comes on the fourth track, "The Purple Bottle". It's a wired, stimulated love song, weaving in comparisons of MDMA use to the feeling Avey gets when with this particular person. Over clicking sticks, and a chorus of different gnome-ish voices, he sings "Can I tell you that you are the purple in me? Can I call you just to hear you would you care?". With a sense of wonder and a childlike inflection, Avey floats softly over the infectiously sweet melody. It's a simple question, it's a simple moment. But it's an infinitely complex emotion. The ability to shrink down every long, overdrawn statement of love into two simple sentences is something so beautiful it defies explanation. In its deconstruction, the honesty of the moment is pulled into question when the metaphor of ecstasy usage is used. Is it the drug talking? Is it really love?
I guess that's why Avey asked the questions in the first place.
"Banshee Beat", a long, droning account of recovery, holds the second moment. Though initially focused on the remnants of a bad breakup, the song slowly builds into an anthem of renewal. From coming to terms with an ex's new lover, to accepting the shift of reality after a relationship, track six on Feels quietly makes its way along. Avey is almost whispering throughout, as if saying hushed words to a friend at a sleepover, or relaying the events as secretive as possible. His tone, though, after everything is laid down. "And I can't find you at our kissing place. And I'm scared of those new pair of eyes you have. So duck out and go down to find the swimming pool" Avey sings, as he flexes his voice and lifts his tone on the last word. It's the first loud and only loud moment on the track, though it does repeat once more. It's not with a winded narrative. It's not with crazy, quirky instruments. It's not with a quote from an obscure novel. No, Avey Tare perfectly capture the essence of new found happiness by singing the word "pool".
Through his voice, you can hear the heartaches slipping away. You can hear the periods of sadness. You can hear the gradual process of recovery. In one moment you can hear the freedom of tearing away from all that, jumping in the pool, and starting clean. It's reminiscent of the "oh woah's" in the opening track, "Did You See The Words" but it completely flips it on it's head.
Moments like these happen on every track on this album, at least in some way. Maybe the youthful, ecstatic chants at the end of "Grass", or the sexual, hazy nighttime fog of "Flesh Canoe", this album is packed with emotion at it's most sonic level. The genius lies in the package of it all. It's Animal Collective hitting the right notes on every level, accomplishing the sounds they were working on since Spirit They've Gone, Spirit They've Vanished. It conveys emotion through sound in a way no album has done before, and most likely, ever will.
Feels is ***ing awesome.
