Centipede Hz
- Animal Collective
- Band Name: Animal Collective
- Record Label: Domino
- Release Date: Sep 4, 2012
- Critic Score
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Sep 26, 201295Although the quartet might not have topped Merriweather Post Pavillion, it did the next best thing: make an album that's entirely new and just as exciting. [No.91 p.52]
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Sep 4, 201291Centipede Hz is dense and unforgivingly full-throttle--you'll find no "Loch Raven" or even "Chores" here – and home to some of the band's best and most involved lyrics to date.
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Nov 15, 201290Each song is impactful and memorable, with a fantastic approach to songcraft that focuses on minimal gestures, mixed with tremendous layers and layers of sounds.
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Sep 10, 201290Centipede HZ is a reaffirmation. It reminds us that Animal Collective plays interactive, now and forever.
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Sep 4, 201290Centepede Hz is somehow both futuristically innovative and welcomingly accessible. Amid the obscurantism caused by white noise and radio interference are strong choruses likely to get any form of life dancing.
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Aug 28, 201288It's perhaps overly long (53 minutes) and hard to penetrate, but Animal Collective's creativity glows brighter than Ric Flair's hair.
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Aug 28, 201285A magical album that takes the listener on a wondrous journey into a party where love is found, lost, and ultimately sublimated into an unsurpassable catharsis. [Aug/Sep 2012, p.108]
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Sep 5, 201282As usual, though, the group are at their best when trying to come to terms with grace and beauty.
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Aug 29, 201282When the band puts their best foot forward ("Monkey Riches," "Father Time," "Applesauce," "Mercury Man," and "Pulleys,") they sound like an outfit deserving of all the hype and praise bestowed upon them.
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Sep 19, 201280In reconnecting with the guileless, tribal chaos of their roots, Animal Collective have made another delirious and ecstatic step forward. [Oct 2012, p.87]
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Sep 6, 201280It's intoxicating listening that demands repeated attention. [Oct 2012, p.102]
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Sep 5, 201280If it's not yet clear, Centipede does retain much of the band's earnest, knowing naiveté.
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Sep 4, 201280Simultaneously the most and the least pop record of the autumn.
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Sep 4, 201280With just a bit more of a push, Centipede Hz could have been something truly special, but as it stands, it's a portrait of growing up that is wonderfully vivid but a tad unfulfilling, a collection of tracks boasting some remarkable tunes and a complex theme, and an album that is bound to satisfy both hardcore and casual fans.
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Sep 4, 201280Nine albums into their career, Animal Collective continue to deliver records far ahead of their time.
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Sep 4, 201280Centipede Hz feels celebratory.
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Sep 4, 201280All in all, Centipede Hz is an album that'll get a hold on you as all its arms grab on and don't let go.
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Sep 4, 201280Centipede Hz stretches them out of their traditional organic structures and into a slightly unknown world.
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Aug 31, 201280Experimental, psychedelic, mad, and oddly, very listenable pop music.
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Aug 31, 201280Their latest album may not be quite as viscerally dark as that record's production (the haunted house bridge on "Mercury Man" hits closest), but Tare's solo claustrophobic musings still seem to be just as intrinsic.
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Aug 29, 201280Submit fully to Centipede Hz and it will infect you, quite deliciously, for the foreseeable.
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Aug 28, 201280It's chaotic and confounding. It will frustrate as much as it delights. And no, not everything they throw at the wall manages to stick. But my, what a lovely mess they've made.
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Sep 6, 201275The band's manic creativity can still dazzle. [7 Sep 2012, p.75]
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Sep 4, 201274With Centipede Hz, Animal Collective have delivered a cluttered, abrasive album that confirms their naysayers' exaggerated perceptions of the band. But even a patchy Animal Collective album yields several exceptional songs.
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Dec 19, 201270Listening to Centipede is like going through a garage filled with clutter.
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Oct 3, 201270Despite their pop savvy, it's a surprisingly difficult listen. [Sep 2012, p.57]
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Sep 11, 201270Centipede Hz is an album that both gazes up into the cosmos, and stares down into the dirt--and perhaps that's not so weird.
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Sep 4, 201270Those who decried the last album's lack of spontaneity will be satisfied with Centipede Hz, but it hits hardest when the guys lock into something that works.
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Sep 4, 201270Oddly enough, the most striking part of the record may be the transitions.
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Sep 4, 201270It takes time to acclimate to the album's frenetic fog. In that sense, Centipede Hz is both a return to and rejection of form.
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Sep 4, 201270It's jolly and kinetic and greater than the sum of its songs.
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Sep 4, 201270There's a higher percent of anxiety and queasiness mixed in amid the moments of pop bliss, and though fans of the glassy perfection of MPP may be initially disappointed, Centipede Hz sounds like another logical step in the band's evolution.
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Aug 28, 201270What gives Centipede Hz its relatable gravity is that, this time out, Animal Collective sound more like creatures who put their skinny jeans on one hoof at a time.
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Sep 4, 201263Recording together in a room (as opposed to assembling songs online) for the first time in years, Animal Collective also reengaged the primal aggression of its early work.
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Sep 20, 201260The Baltimore psych-experimental rock band's ninth begins in a youthful and joyous way, but the exuberance unravels into something close to obnoxious chaos.
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Sep 4, 201260Amid pell-mell songs such as standout Today's Supernatural there is rarely a pause to draw breath on this fine follow-up.
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Sep 4, 201260Centipede Hz is not their worst album as some will believe--or as its dense ugliness will first sound--and it may continue to reveal itself over time like TV on the Radio's Nine Types of Light or Spoon's Transference.
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Aug 28, 201260Centipede Hz sets them up well for the future, without always managing to satisfy in the present.
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Sep 4, 201258Centipede Hz insists that listeners think their way to liking it.
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Sep 5, 201255Like the subjects of these songs, the music itself wanders.
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Sep 6, 201250This is a difficult album to love... the overriding impression is of a not entirely pleasant sugar rush.
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Sep 4, 201250Centipede Hz may have a lot of interesting elements floating around, and it may be held together by the same strong songcraft that has always sustained Animal Collective, but it's all too murky and familiar, less profoundly complex than inaccessibly complicated.
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Sep 4, 201250For large parts of this record, perhaps for the first time since the group's inception, Animal Collective sounds like a band doing little more than going through the motions.
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Aug 30, 201250It's as if by having every tool and style of every era and nation available to them at the press of a button has stripped AC's world of its mystery; as if there's nothing more to discover.
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Sep 4, 201240"Merriweather Post Pavilion," had comparatively more open space, medium tempos, and a lot more Panda Bear, who restricts himself emotionally as he tries to make his limited voice beautiful. This record is dominated, even saturated, by Avey Tare, who does not.
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Aug 31, 201240While there's some interesting moments to be found here, for the most part Centipede Hz is a fatiguing experience.