Animal Collective - Koko, London - 12/1/09
3/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Appropriately enough for a buzz band who have prompted incessant cyberspace pontification in recent months, there's lot to scratch one's chin about in north London tonight as Animal Collective roll into town on a frenzied wave of hyperbole.
Will the near-universal adulation heaped upon the Baltimoreans latest, Merriwether Post Pavilion and its genre-defying, musical smorgasbord clean-sweeping propel them beyond cult blogsophere concern and into the mainstream? Will those tantalising hints at melodic perfection that pepper the new AC material ever truly be given free reign as they are on the big, clubby, unfeasibly poppy 'Brother Sport'? Can a band so visually unprepossessing (save for keyboard whizz Brian Weitz's striking miner's cap lamp) be taken to the alt-rock world's collective musical bosom? Will the august Koko experience anything quite like the heady blend of spiky punk-funk a la The Rapture, bone-rattling big beat, Beck-ish trip-hop interludes, a compression of Super Furry Animal's "Guerilla" LP, luminescent LCD Soundystem-ness and Vampire Weekend played at the incorrect RPM again in 2009?
Of course, a lack of providing straightforward answers remains part of their inscrutable charm, but this remained a consistently very impressive show that never quite went supernova. Ultimately, however, Animal Collective pose more questions than they answer here.
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