TUNES RECOVERY PROJECT: Animal Collective – My Girls
Not for the first time, I really, really wish we had Mike Powell writing for us…
[Video][Myspace]
[4.94]
Anthony Easton: I do not know how to read Animal Collective.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Spanning electro, scenes of kids playing with sparklers and boogers, and a Beach Boy or two, this puts their golly-gee sense of wonder in a place just out of reach of rot, which is its fate on a parent album that can stand some adult supervision.
[7]
Rodney J. Greene: “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things/ Like a social status.” First of all, social status isn’t a material thing, like a house. There’s nothing wrong with having aspirations, but to come from a position of privilege and be all “Social status? Who? Moi?” even as you go to good colleges, make good money doing cultural work, and buy property in the suburbs pisses me off. There’s probably no good reason why I find your privilege-in-denial so angering while Vampire Weekend’s privilege-on-sleeve amuses, but, you know, a sense of humor about such things and not sounding like utter fucking garbage can get you a long way. I find your lack of self-awareness even more nauseating than your physically discomfitting mass of treble.
[0]
Jonathan Bradley: Forget socialism in the White House: The real place that scourge has infected is the lyrics of hyped-up indie rock bands — sorry, “collectives.” Someone inform a tea partier! There’s no real way to defend lyrics as awful as “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things, like a social status,” even if you do agree with the sentiment. The real utopianism here is in the starry-eyed synthesizer supernova; a sparkling array of blips that cohere into a lush, dreamy whole. Add to that rattling subterranean bass thumps, the kind more appropriate for a club than an adobe village, and all the hippie bullshit in the world can’t prevent this from being a joyous and celebratory party-starter. Now, can someone call T-Pain to do the remix?
[10]
Michaelangelo Matos: The thing that always turned me off about these guys is how insular they came across, and that’s true as well of their pop move (you know, their real one, not the Ween-sounding shit their claque swore up and down was “pop” around 2004). Only here the insularity is social rather than musical. When they swear to disavow material things, it induces class-based irritation of a very special kind; hearing them aurally high-five one another as they set off the next round of loops does not help matters.
[4]
Martin Kavka: One of the (few) things that Animal Collective do well is tap into a feeling of detached bliss by affecting a variety of different moods. This is perhaps their most perfect song, but their ethos of willed detachment (“experimental”!!) strikes me as music for people who are afraid of others and therefore want to create their own private gated universe. You know, like hipsters. Or right-wing Republicans.
[5]
Kat Stevens: Even a right old bloody mess like this can be saved by one strong melody repeated over and over again.
[7]
Ian Mathers: Hey look! Indie stars can prove that a fantastic chorus makes up for incredibly dumb lyrics just as easily as pop stars do! The twinkling abeyance of the first, oh, ninety seconds winds up being kind of worth it once the refrain and subsequent chorus (and, crucially, the fucking beat) finally kick in. But for god’s sake, the chorus proper doesn’t even show up until three minutes in, and the song doesn’t achieve full power until there’s only a minute left.
[6]
Chuck Eddy: Well, it has a pulse, and I suppose I mean that in both the literal and figurative senses. Though I’m not really sure if the singers have one. Basically, I find this rather likeable — in a relaxing minimalist repetition sense, I guess — whenever they shut up. And whenever they start back to burbling, my blood starts back to boiling.
[2]
Iain Forrester: This song mostly makes me think of my girlfriend’s two-month old niece who started crying as soon as it came on the radio. That and Ian’s excellent point about its lyrics last time we did it. Oooh, and I just noticed — the synths are near enough the same as “Break Your Heart”, aren’t they? All of which is to say that while I can admire the skill behind the dense collage of sounds here, it leaves me far too cold to take more than a theoretical interest.
[5]
Alex Macpherson: I’ve been irked by a fair few artists this year, but usually the reason is an obnoxious persona working in tandem with bad music. With Animal Collective, it’s just the sonics. Like most of what I’ve heard by them, “My Girls” is a seasickness-inducing mess. Flattened-out production which makes the song sound like it’s trying to breathe through clingfilm; the rudimentary electronic bibble which refuses to go anywhere or develop into anything and just keeps hanging there, like a broken car alarm whose owners have gone on holiday; the one-note synthpad passing, badly, for a bassline, which sounds like a baby is crawling over a keyboard. These elements appear to have been laid over each other entirely at random, and as “My Girls” fumbles ineptly along, even more clutter is added, but EVEN THAT is not the worst thing about the song because the worst thing is Noah Lennox’s fucking abomination of a voice. It makes me livid that anyone has the temerity to inflict that pitchless, lifeless, smug blare on to the world, let alone under the guise of art, let alone exacerbate its horror by oscillating back and forth over and over and fucking over again, never once even nearing the concept of singing in key. Luckily for this intolerable band, their actual words are buried somewhat, but looking them up, they appear to be infantile hippie bullshit. This is literally the worst thing I have ever heard, it makes me want to commit acts of violence on those responsible and as far as I’m concerned anyone encouraging them or expressing positive sentiments towards them rescinds their right to be taken seriously on the subject of music ever again.
[0]
Tal Rosenberg: If you take the mushy lyrics about domesticity and family out of the picture, and just keep the melody and the music intact, this is a damn good song. The handclaps that enter halfway; the swooning chant (WHOO!) just after the first refrain, before the handclaps come in again, louder and more dramatically; the little twinkling synth that hovers over a cloud of fog. Combine all these elements together and you have a band taking their avant-pop and giving it a plethora of vision and scope, something avant-pop rarely does, preferring to reside in small spaces. That’s all these guys want. But the image is so much more.
[9]
Anthony Miccio: Post-rave Beach Boys psychedelia, with its modest novelty bolstered by a gen-yoo-wine hook. Whoop-de-freakin-doo, but since I rarely find the aforementioned predecessors transcendent in this mode (not to mention timeline sharers ELO or Olivia Tremor Control), I’m not surprised this gets them in the collegiate listening pantheon.
[6]
Matt Cibula: I guess I see why so many people do backflips over these guys — they do a great job of updating the Eno/Byrne/Reich circular float. But I haven’t heard anything else they have ever done — we travel in different circles — so if this is their big pop move then color me pessimistic.
[5]
Chris Boeckmann: It’s like they wrote a great pop song and then (successfully) tried to figure out the most insufferable way of presenting it. I’m not opposed to experimenting with texture, but these synths sound gross and the vocals are incredibly obnoxious.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: Almost gets into a pleasing groove two minutes in, you know. Actually, better than “almost”, the second half of this song is pleasingly thuddy. Sadly the entirety is besmirched by a hideous tuneless mess masquerading as a melody for the most parts. Builds up to a pretty decent climax, but you can get your thrills elsewhere without this song’s attendant torture, so why bother?
[2]
Shockingly low grade.
I ended up getting into this album and would agree w/Jonathan’s sentiments and Kat’s mark. It – in fact the whole album – reminds this old indie-dance warhorse of Primal Scream’s “Higher Than The Sun”. Not as good but you’re only young once. Bobby Gillespie is an even worse singer than Mr P. Bear too!
Two other things: the opening synths are a lift from “My Love” aka “You Got The Love” and that stopped me liking this for a long time. And I have always heard “social status” as “social stats” and thought they might be singing about Twitter followers.
I think my use of “real” three times in the one blurb is a far better reason to rescind my right to be taken seriously on the subject of music than my liking for this song.
After spending most of this year working out the causes of my extreme indifference to Merriweather Post Pavilion it’s become clear: it is the late noughties equivalent to those “oh, look, these indie freaks can write proper songs after all” end-of-the-last-decade critically acclaimed albums by accredited long servers in the Blue Square League of indie – I give you Deserter’s Songs, please also take The Soft Bulletin – which likewise bored me to distraction.
I do not mean to suggest that “My Girls” approaches anything resembling a Proper Song but if anything it reminds me of a “Sweet Disposition” for Pfork readers; that same post-Joshua Tree running on the spot feeling, except that it never gets off the ground; as with most of MPP it resembles an extended intro and one ends up impatient for the song to begin. It will be applauded, dutifully and solemnly, by this year’s less adroit critics and be quick to appear in profilic used quantities the globe over.
I don’t know.. it’s a ‘choon though. What’s shocking to me is grading los campesinos high and this low.. that’s revealing a lack of indie hate priorities.
So this is supposed to be a “pop” record??? Wow.
Also, why Mike Powell? (I’m curious — I feel there must be a joke or reference there that I’m just not getting.)
If you only count the scores for critics who were once on staff at Stylus, this gets a 6.25. (I’m not trying to argue that their scores are more valid or anything, but I do think it’s interesting how Animal Collective have become a canonical band in certain Internet circles and an object of scorn or befuddlement in others.)
Chuck, I think it’s just because Mike has written at length and quite well about the band in the past.
Apparently it IS “like they’re social stats”, well done my ears.
(And because he used to contribute to the Singles Jukebox prior to its current incarnation.)
John, given that two ex-Stylus writers (at least – I can’t remember who wrote there and who didn’t) gave this a 0 and a 2, I don’t think you can really draw any conclusions from that. In any case, what “internet circles” are you referring to, and what do you find interesting about that?
All the lyrics websites I found say it’s “status”. Not that “stats” would be any better, the privilege-in-denial would still be there (and is still in the rest of the lyrics!), it would just make slightly less sense.
I was counting Soto, Bradley, Mathers, Forrester, Rosenberg, Miccio, Cibula, and Okulicz. Maybe I missed someone.
I guess I just meant that it’s interesting to find a cumulatively negative score for a song that’s been met with such high praise elsewhere. I thought for some reason that the ex-Stylusers would be more likely to be part of that wave of praise (maybe because so many *other* ex-Stylusers have gone on to write for Pitchfork?), but given that all the people I named have such different tastes, that was probably foolish.
Still, Lex, I’d hate to live in a world deprived of the music writing of Tim Finney and Mark Richardson.
Given that I’ve written so many nasty things about these creeps in the last year, I thought this was more than OK when I heard it for the first time since January – more than OK enough to say fuck’em and give it a 7. But I’m grouchy today, and I hereby retract my score.
I really can’t tell if lex is joking or not.
John – yeah, I know Pitchfork jizz themselves silly over this band. But that’s a niche website with a very specific demographic, and it’s unsurprising that people who don’t align with that don’t necessarily share the enthusiasm. There’s a world of opinion beyond that little indie cubbyhole! Indeed the response on Twitter – from plenty of critics and journalists not affiliated with Pitchfork, as well as friends and acquaintances – suggests that the negativity has a lot of support.
I used to write for Stylus.
I’m with Alfred on this one on everything except I’d still settle on a 5-6 because I can’t imagine ever using it for anything (a 7 implies I’d actually keep the song). It sounds like it exists only to be discussed on blogs, and I found listening to the album to be a chore. But I was also part of the 2004 claque that dug “Sung Tongs,” and I still think it’s their best album. But I’m pretty sure I never called it “pop” (and if I did, I was wrong).
I use it as a good thing to be on an album between “In The Flowers” and “Also Frightened” (which are my two favourite MPP songs for what its worth). I can see why it’s “the single” but I don’t think there needs to be one.
FWIW I also didn’t score great album tracks from albums I loved this year very highly when reviewing them as singles.
I associate the sound of ‘my girls’ w/ being SUPER PISSED OFF that I had heard ‘my girls’ because i was trying to see how long I could go without ever hearing it.
(this was in september: i think i did pretty well, all things considered!)
Thought this would do better. Probably only my 4th favourite track on the album tho (its “corniness” hampers it but only a little).
“the opening synths are a lift from “My Love” aka “You Got The Love” and that stopped me liking this for a long time”
I didn’t really notice the similarity of the pattern but if I had I would’ve seen this as a good thing I guess!
Got you beat, Cis: I still have not heard a single Animal Collective song.
I actually played Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’re Vanished and Danse Manatee all the way through in the background two or three times when they were re-released together on a double CD in 2003 (even kept my copy for a few years — come to think of it, it may still be in a theoretical ebay pile on the top shelf of the downstairs hall closet), but I’m pretty sure I haven’t consciously listened to an AC song since, until this one. How many other people can say that, I wonder?
I can say that and raise you one == this is THE FIRST AND ONLY Animal Collective song I have ever heard.
Chuck, Mike has written extremely well about Animal Collective in various venues, and since Mike writes evenhandedly and evocatively on bands that tend to be written about in hyperbole, I think what Will’s trying to say is that he’d be a valuable contribution when indie hits are up for review, since he would undoubtedly make the discussion more interesting.
I’d like to see you guys review a sunset, next. Or perhaps a box of kittens. “Everybody is so OBSESSED with this box of kittens and it makes me SO ANGRY.”
Erika, that’s awesome! I bow to your AC-avoiding superior skills. Alas I saw them live in… 2004 or something, so that was never an option (even if all i remember of that night is that i had a migraine, and subsequently a massive fight with my then best friend. i know who to blame, i’m just sayin).
Why is it considered a virtue to have avoided Animal Collective?
for me it’s not so much a virtue as a game?
I have also avoided ‘in rainbows’ and several smiths albums.
JMC: Because they suck.
I don’t think it’s a virtue. There’s just thousands of more intriguing bands and singers out there. And life is short.
alex mcpherson “the worst thing i have ever heard”
What a complete load of bollocks. I don’t really like this song, and have never really understood the fuss about the band, but to say that this is the worst song ever and to give it 0 renders the whole concept of this website pointless.
You clearly have some sort of grudge against this band, for the unanswerable sin of being praised by various websites and bloggers. Get over it.
Wow, you AC-avoiders are so great. There’s no way you might like, really like or even love this band, because you purposefully avoid them! You might even DISLIKE them for more sentient reasons than “social status isn’t a material thing duh” but you’ll never know, because you’d rather have no opinion at all than a common one! I mean, fuck listening to music that lots and lots of other people with similar approaches to music to yours seem to love – the most important thing is that no-one will mistake you for a sheep, hooray!
I’m conducting a longitudinal study to find out whether I can live a long and fulfilled life without hearing more than 20% of the musicians Pitchfork finds enjoyable, John.
I don’t doubt that Lex is also inflamed by the hype, Other Tom, but I know him and “My Girls” honestly IS pretty much the diametric opposite of everything he enjoys in music. I think only a Flaming Lips song would be worse from his point of view.
Hate to bump the comment count up here because this is not worth it AT ALL, but someone needs to note that by the mercy of the lord PIZZA HUT! TACO BELL! is still in the 50’s in comments and rightfully ahead of this one, plus the comment thread is totally awesome whereas this one is as much a slog as the Animal Collective record. But I bet this one will get google troll comments for about a year.
A question from Matthew Fluxblog who’s talkin’ shit but not bringing it here for some reason:
“Imagine if the internet as we know it now was around in 1988, and a bunch of (mostly) out-of-touch cranks got together to viciously rip on “Teenage Riot.” This Singles Jukebox post is kinda like that, and it is the even-more-embarrassing flipside of this.”
No idea why he thinks people who legitimately dislike this song (some intensely, and why shouldn’t you more intensely dislike a song that your particular internet bubble thinks is really really great?) are “out of touch.” But regardless, how would the critics who were around and possibly writing music criticism in 1988 have rated “Teenage Riot”? My guess is it wouldn’t pass a 6.5 around here.
This clearly calls for a Retro Jukebox, which I’d start if I only could deign a website and had time.
I was around in 1988 and would have given Teenage Riot a 9!
We would have put http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWsRz3TJDEY or maybe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsxsyZqmmlQ well above “Teenage Riot” as our EOY #1 and we’d have been right. We’d also have rated http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugo5sfgIWKs above Sonic Youth, though.
And this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk – would have been a 30 post thread, I’d hope.
hahahahaha “deign”–I meant “design” obv. but there’s something troll-feeding about the typo, isn’t there?
Hoo hah:
Most of (*Daydream Nation*) is watery wallpaper regardless. “Teenage Riot” isn’t — it’s obligatory catchable lost-cause pop-optimism, perplexingly naive, like Thurston Moore still believes the punk-rock hoax, even if the only teenage riots conceivable by 1988 would’ve come from crack-fried neo-Panthers or domehead neo-Nazis. “You’re never gonna stop all the teenage leather,” he croons, but the leather’s already been trampled to death. The song’s video came out the same year as Def Leppard’s “Rocket” (weird, because “Teenage Riot”’s followed by “Rocket” here), and both vids are mainly montage-collages of the bands’ heroes: SY pick Iggy, the Fall, Henry Rollins; Def Lep pick T. Rex, Mott, Queen. You couldn’t see Hawkwind in either, though Lep listed ‘em in a newspaper headline. I liked “Rocket” more because of Lep’s after-the-fact makeup move.”
Wrote that around 1990 (it’s in my metal book, which came out in ‘91); I’m guessing I would’ve given the song a 7 or so at the time. (Now I’d probably give it an 8.) Was still by far by favorite track on the album, though I didn’t realize until this year that they had probably named “Eliminator Jr.” after something I’d written about them the year before in my Voice review of Sister, which I called “Afterburner to Evol’s Eliminator.”
Should be “followed by ‘Silver Rocket’ here…,” actually.
And who knows, maybe I’d actually even give the song a 9 now. Though I doubt I’d give anything they’ve done since Daydream more than a 7, if that. (And do even Pitchforkers honestly believe that Animal Collective are as good, or important, as Sonic Youth anyway? That whole idea just strikes me as nuts.)
Not sure what I was thinking with that “crack-fried neo-Panther” crack, btw. Probably just a stupid dig at Flavor Flav or somebody. Hey, I was cranky in my youth!
Sighs… TSJ writers once again base their reviews on the artists’ image. Taylor Swift, anyone?
Why do you people only come out of the woodworks on the indie zeitgestiest songs of the year? We could use the comments year-round, particularly on the 99% of songs on this site that you’ll never bother to even listen to.
A zeitgest is like a zeitgeist but looks more like pre-digested food.
OK, OK, I spoke too soon. Apologies to Warehouse specifically who did, in fact, comment (well) on Taylor’s “Fifteen.” And I guess aside from that I should not FTT.
There’s a whole discussion going on on people’s Tumblrs right now–a lot of stuff I would link that should actually be going, as Dave alluded, in this very comments thread–but one thing that everyone has missed in the ensuing discussion, that Jonathan pointed out, is when Lex said,
“as far as I’m concerned anyone encouraging them or expressing positive sentiments towards them rescinds their right to be taken seriously on the subject of music ever again.”
I mean, sure, this is totally ridiculous and begs to be viewed with some sort of combination of ridiculousness and derision, but most of all it’s disappointing, because it’s total bait for lazy thinkers to come in and accuse Lex of similarly lazy thinking, and then all we get is a huge round of vacuous comments that don’t address what the song does and why people like it or dislike it, which Lex did until his impetuosity and his emotions got the better of his (perfectly reasonable) judgment.
I’m not better: I wrote my blurb hastily and with little thought, and it shows. In retrospect, I might have given this song an 8. But what I like about this song remains the same, though I only insinuated it in my blurb. Basically everything that’s an instrumental element in the song sounds shabby, poorly produced, cheap–which Lex accurately pointed out; everything except for the voices, which are clear and bold and chorused and placed high in the mix. This is unusual for Animal Collective, since in the past, the tendency has been for their voices to be obscured; lyrics difficult to decipher; and once understood, cryptic and elusive. But the approach remains very much the same with regards to the music, which is trying to create pop from a skewed perspective, albeit one seemingly crafted from a limited budget. What’s different this time is that the levels of echo are much, much higher, which makes the music sound a lot bigger. It’s that scope, one that’s quite clearly crafted on limited means, that gives the song its character, the notion of engaging with the world as an adult–while elementary, in actuality, a sizable revelation–reflected in the vision of the music.
The problem is that you would have to be relatively familiar with Animal Collective’s music to understand how the band is taking new steps while remaining very much in their character. Personally, I think a lot of the problem that some detractors of Animal Collective–strictly within a rock-crit universe, that is–have is with the cultish-type audience that follows them, which is where I see the comparisons to The Grateful Dead. It’s not so much in the hippy sentiments (which to be fair are relatively new in Animal Collective’s purview, most of their older music is unsettling and creepy and weird) as in the slavish devotion and ostensibly unequivocal worship. Except in this case there are many critics who possess exactly this same type of worship, which is where the frustration stems from: with the idea that someone who should be thinking critically seems to be thinking purely on emotional terms.
This board really loves Taylor Swift, yet I see no waning of critical energy when a new single pops up. Let’s not forget that Swift’s audience is five times the size of Animal Collective’s, as Swift’s position in this week’s Billboard album chart proves, yet we’ve shown no slavish devotion and unequivocal worship.
Which is to say, in case it wasn’t clear, that we don’t give a good goddamn about the depths of audience devotion.
Oh god, I wasn’t accusing anyone on this board of this problem. I was only trying to point out why I think such heated discussion seems to generate from this particular band on the Internet generally.
Hey, here’s a relevant Tumbl for y’all: the lyrics to this song that aren’t of the pseudo-controversy “social stats” section are terrible:
“There isn’t much that I feel I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed
But with a little girl, and by my spouse,
I only want a proper house
I don’t care for fancy things
Or to take part in the freshest wave,
But to provide for mine who ask
I will, with heart, on my father’s grave “
What is a “solid soul”? WTF else are you sposeta bleed? WTF is the “freshest wave” (of what? “General social trends”?)?
And the more I actually pay attention to the lyrics the more I feel like Rodney is 100% dead on here: the basic gist of this song is saying “I really don’t ask for much, and lord knows I could do with nothing myself, but I do need the basics for my family. Is that too much to ask?” I bet this position is a lot easier to take when it can be taken for granted. “Now that I’ve already had a relatively comfortable life, I’d like to quickly assert that I don’t really need any of it.” Great!
Erika’s reply:
Seriously? This is like a freshman poetry workshop in the 1890s. “By my spouse / I only want a proper house”?
My larger point through the various Tumblr convos is that the two 0’s here are for the most part right when it comes to a reasonable interpretation of the song — Lex is singling out the sounds, which he hates, and Rodney is pretty accurately, I think, expressing some misgivings about the dubious authenticity of the whole ascetic-becoming-a-simple-family-man thang.
“don’t really need any of it” — except for M’girls. Which is what this song should have been called btw.
Put me down as “love” on the love/hate scale here. I have some kneejerk AC hate as well, but this is a moving well-designed song; a kind of incantatory prayer for fatherhood in a generation that doesn’t know how to grow up.
and i regret not blurbing it, cuz i wanted to spend some time discussing it but i was on the road for thanksgiving.
but at least an 8 and maybe a 9.
Psh, speak for yourself, I grew up just fine! And even if they’re about fatherhood, I think the lyrics to this are adolescently written, like a 16-year-olds conception of what he believes fatherhood to be. (Though really I should be directing ALL of this to the Pizza Hut/Taco Bell thread to bump up the numbers.)
dude, it’s a song about YOU being a father, not about your father. I ABSOLUTELY hear this as a sixteen year old’s conception of what he believes fatherhood to be and, taken as that alone, I found this beautiful.
Aside: I refuse to hear the climax lyric as being anything other than “I just want/ four walls and an obi sash/for my girls”. It suggests a simple desire for something ornamental and better for our children and a wholesomeness of values that brings to mind Pa in Little House in The Big Woods playing the fiddle for Laura.
I dunno, maybe i’m Rorschaching this too much, but i do hear it and i do feel it so that’s good enough for me.
As a Dad in long standing, I’m often quite fond of Dad songs. And if this one was anywhere near as coherent as, say, all the ones Eminem or Art Alexakis from Everclear have written (a vocalist who could actually put the song over might help), I might go for it. It’s not.
OH SNAP TUMBLR BEEF! FAN THE FLAMES Y’ALL
LOL at how we are accused of insular bullshit but M-Perp calls them “AnCo” and it’s all good. Look for the speck in your own eye, physician heal thyself, etc.
Actually ANCO seems like a pretty appropriate stock-exchange abbreviation/nickname for them to me but not in a good way.
“Imagine if the internet as we know it now was around in 1988, and a bunch of (mostly) out-of-touch cranks got together to viciously rip on “Teenage Riot.”"
You know, I like “Teen Age Riot” better than this song (it doesn’t squander as much of its potential), but that sounds like a pretty good time. And except for the “out-of-touch” thing (which, really, LOL) it’s not even insulting! Maybe we could rip on all of Daydream Nation, since it sucks?
“Basically everything that’s an instrumental element in the song sounds shabby, poorly produced, cheap–which Lex accurately pointed out”
I think this is completely and utterly wrong and it baffles me that people keep criticising them from this angle.
I only want some proper house.
Look, I like Animal Collective (Feels, Spirit They’ve Gone…, most of MPP), but
1. This isn’t a great song.
2. It has the shape of a great song lurking inside of it, obscured by crap lyrics and a reluctance to get to the point.
3. I can kind of accept that as an album track on MPP (as Tom said, between two better songs), but as a pop single? No.
4. The SINGLES part of singles jukebox isn’t incidental.
Even if you like this kind of music (and there’s nothing wrong with lex et al hating it), there are good reasons not to drink the “My Girls” koolaid. The fact that the score for this single is being taken as evidence of either nefariousness or some sort of bad faith/disingeneousness by people is just sad.
Tom: Apparently it IS “like they’re social stats”, well done my ears.
Back when the record came out, Stylus’s Ally Broon interviewed Geologist, and reported back to us that the lyric is “social status,” but is necessarily sung as “social stats.” That was the basis for me quoting it as such.
“Social stats” would be just as awful a lyric as well, anyway.
Also, I wish I could downgrade this to a [9] just so I could hypothetically rate “Teenage Riot” higher. Because *that* song is an easy [10].
Sorry, Ally Brown, of course. His Scottish Internet accent infiltrated my mind.
Stylus’s Ally Broon interviewed Geologist, and reported back to us that the lyric is “social status,” but is necessarily sung as “social stats.”
Who cares what the band intended anyway? Like with all lyrics, it’s what the listener hears that matters. It’s music, for Crissakes; if a word is not pronounced clearly, that’s the singer’s fault — don’t blame the listener. And especially when interpretation is as ambiguous as with this line (I have no opinion one way or another myself, fwiw), there is no “correct” lyric.
[...] hacks and ageing queens that hold fort over at The Singles Jukebox give a middling review to an Animal Collective track (remember? they did that song about Oxford commas, them). Long-term ILB favourite Matthew [...]
No one, not critics nor bands nor anyone else, comes out of lyrical analysis in a good light. There’s a reason Animal Collective are a band and not poets.
I dunno, Ian, my favorite Animal Collective album is probably still Sung Tongs, but for my money, “My Girls” ranks among their best tracks. On Merriweather at least, it’s between this and “Summertime Clothes.”
And yes, the “singles” part of the Singles Jukebox is crucial in the sense that we’re reviewing songs out of context of their album, but I’m not sure that whether a song works as “pop” should be a primary criterion. (Unless you’re using “pop” in a super-broad sense to mean something that has a hook or is engaging. In which case I think “My Girls” does qualify, for me at least, judging by the number of times “I don’t meeean to seem like I care about material things” has surfaced in my head this year. But I think Nitsuh Abebe has written about this better.)
I’m not sure that whether a song works as “pop” should be a primary criterion
Did anybody use that as the primary criterion for their grade, or as a criterion at all, though? (A couple people noted that the record doesn’t sound especially pop, but I’m not sure anybody held that, specifically, against the record. I like tons of non-pop. If this was a good non-pop song, I would have given it a higher grade.)
I thought that’s what Ian was getting at when he said he could accept the song’s flaws if the song were an album track instead of a “pop single”: as though it didn’t live up in his mind to some ideal notion of what a “pop single” should be.
Reading his comment again, I guess he just meant that flaws are more forgivable on album tracks because they might nonetheless work within the context of an album, whereas our duty is to evaluate songs outside of that context. But if that’s the case, then the word “pop” is a red herring.
Take the ‘pop’ out of ‘pop single’ and you’ve got it right, John (at least in the terms we’re talking about now, and thanks for defining some for me). You’re right, it’s a bit of a red herring, although I guess I could have said “popular single” or something.
“flaws are more forgivable on album tracks because they might nonetheless work within the context of an album, whereas our duty is to evaluate songs outside of that context”
I keep going back to this… it’s right, but there’s also a sense in which even good album tracks, ones that aren’t really flawed, don’t necessarily work as singles.
Interesting. I don’t think any of that enters my mind at all when I’m rating songs here — I wouldn’t like an “8″ album track any more or less than an “8″ single. (And when a song shows up here, I probably just consider it a single by definition.) And I just figure my favorite album tracks deserve to be singles, whether they have commercial potential on airwaves in the real world or not. If there are exceptions, I’m not sure what they’d be.
Wow at internet nerds trying to stereotype other internet nerds. Y’all letting your jealousy show.
[...] week we provoked the most comments (and discussion) over our, shall we say, lukewarm response to Animal Collective’s “My Girls,” theoretically the highlight from a parent album beloved our Pitchfork brethren. The review [...]
Lol @ shameless rockism in 2k9: “hearing them aurally high-five one another as they set off the next round of loops”
Lol @ old school Xgau-style class reading of pop music: “even as you go to good colleges, make good money doing cultural work, and buy property in the suburbs pisses me off.”
Think we need Panda Bear’s W-2s to better understand the music of Animal Collective. Had no idea he had property in the burbs (thought he lived in Spain or something). I know he doesn’t have a college degree ( duh, listen to his lyrics). I think the mean average income of indie knob twiddlers is about 14k. Maybe that’s privilege compared to “writers” on the internet.
Think the complaints about the lyrics and production are valid, tho. Will be recommending this site to my grandfather (r.i.p.).
My first experience of this website – fucking awful.
hahaha I’m making fun of the aural high-fiving, not the fact that there’s loops (duh)
hahahaha @ “rockism”
Question: what do you guys think of The-Dream’s lyrics, or Electrik Red’s?
Oh. come on. This is euphoria made, er, plastic. Lots of people dislike Animal Collective, don’t they? That’s an enormous amount of baggage to bring to a review.
Mind you, to love this I do suspect you need to have been 18 circa 1990 – it has that E-build – and have a lot of daughters. Phew. That’s me.
I was 4 circa 1990 (though my pops always used to walk around the house whistling “Back to Life” when I was a toddler, if that gives me cred) and have no plans of children in the forseeable future, so that’s not me at all. I do like plenty of E-damaged music, though.
I think The-Dream’s lyrics can be either very clever or quite clumsy, often at the same time. Usually when his lyrics are clunky, they are endearingly so, but I can certainly understand that being a barrier for someone who doesn’t find the humor in his more stilted moments. His knack for small observations and understanding of just how far he can push the limits of R&B politesse (sometimes crass, but never skeevy) also make him distinct.
Why do you ask?
Uh, a huge proportion of my favourite music is all about the E build. I’m pretty sure hearing Animal Collective on E would be even worse than hearing them sober.
I like the way The-Dream’s lyrics balance crudeness, humour and beauty really well; if there’s a quibble it’s that he can get lazy at times w/r/t construction (something Erika’s pointed out elsewhere). “Mr. Yeah” is a good example of this – I love the basic content but the objects get horribly mangled – “it ain’t they fault cuz I know they mean you well / but every time you fail / she runs right back to Mr. Yeah” – WHY DOES THE “YOU” RANDOMLY AND NONSENSICALLY SWITCH FROM THE GIRL TO THE GUYS MIDWAY THROUGH THAT.
Brendan: “Good colleges” was based on Wikipedia (yeah, I know) and “property in the suburbs” on the lyrics of the song, and, considering that their album landed in the top 20 of Billboard, they are probably making a bit more than your average “indie knob twiddlers,” although I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they were legitimate starving artists five years ago.
You miss my point though, which isn’t to berate them merely for their background. Their background in itself isn’t offensive at all (hell, not even Paris Hilton’s is), and the lyrics, whether I misheard them or not, would be lame coming from anyone, but the interplay between them really rubs me the wrong way.
It doesn’t really matter that much in the end. I can’t deal with the sound of the record at all and probably would have only given it a [1] and written a blurb that thematically resembled Lex’s if I didn’t take issue with the lyric.
Also, my takes on class are very different from Xgau’s. Where he sometimes seems unnecessarily critical of the upwardly mobile (a category which probably includes myself), my beef is only with this uncommitted faux-upward mobility that tries to have it both ways.
I made a similar point *about* Paris Hilton’s album a few years ago — if she were actually singing about the social baggage that tends to accompany her, I would almost certainly HATE her music, but the fact of the matter is that she isn’t really in conversation with it (explicitly), and to pin this stuff to her based on what’s in her songs seemed to be missing the point. Compare, e.g., to Kevin Federline’s album, in which whatever your worst perception of him might be IS the album — and I hated the K-Fed album!
I wrote more about The-Dream’s lyrics, AnCo’s lyrics, and the music, structure, and the seeming anxieties about material wealth that are echoed in The-Dream’s “Fancy” in interesting ways.
Also, please comment more on the Das Racist thread.
Rodney- I think you are right, the only good reason to make a discussion about a pop/indie/whatever song into a discussion about class is if the artist addresses it without being honest about it. I would like to hear what you think about “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
What my good college told me though was that one should be wary of conflating author with speaker. I don’t think any listener would interpret this as meaning Panda Bear has actual plans to make his dwelling under under adobe slabs, or slats. I think everything about the delivery–from the way he articulates (the “stats/status” controversy), the emphasis on melody and texture over narrative–deliberately abstracts what he is saying. It’s using an affected “simple” voice for its Thoreau-ish (cheesy yes) theme–something that, for example, The White Stripes (amongst many other bands) have done in the past. So, I don’t think calling Panda Bear out on his privilege is at all relevant when the message seems to be “yearning for simplicity is a common human experience especially today, and I’m going to summon that shared feeling in my indie song.”
Further, more than a few musicians who may or may not have grown up “legitimately starving” (badge of honor!) then go on to write songs about how they long for simpler lives, before they had status and before they had pagers. Not altogether different than with this band who have recently made a lot of money for the first time.
Finally, the writing I’ve now read on here is mostly ace (M. Matos, “aural high five” is hilariously accurate). The tone of some of these pieces (the suburbs! college! white people!!), though, would indicate that you are not open to music made by a particular demographic. Fine. However, I find English majors devoting their time to loving Gucci Mane and hating on indie rock (an all too common “social stance”) more uncomfortable and misguided than anything in this song, annoying as it may be.
I liked it.
Much like Santa Claus or the human race, Animal Collective require a leap of faith.
i thought the line was “material things OR a social status”. which makes a bit more sense. not great lyrics though.
seeing them tonite. i quite like them.
Scott Seward on ILM (different song, who cares):
the song is “also frightened”. doesn’t thrill me, really. got the martin denny + beach boys swirly swirl thing going on. no real song to speak of.