Feels

#39 Seller of 2005! Following 2004's widely acclaimed Sung Tongs album and more than a year of snowballing momentum, Animal Collective return with an eagerly-anticipated new album - a truly stunning, inviting, often heart-warming experience. Feels is the band’s seventh album to date and, as has come to be expected, sees them again kicking off from their previous release to explore another different direction. Where Sung Tongs was largely acoustic-based and the product of just two members of the Collective (Avey Tare and Panda), Feels is in contrast a full group effort (also including Geologist and Deakin). Moving further away from the suggestion of folkish affinities (they always sat in their own space, came at things from a different angle), it is electrified, rhythmically more urgent, and overall a considerably denser work. Those sweet melodies and big catchy hooks remain intact, and the songwriting is once again bold, brave and adventurous, as ever indelibly stamped with their own unique personality.