Photos: Animal Collective [Chicago, IL; 05/17/07]

Last night, a couple songs into Animal Collective's set at Chicago's Metro, Avey Tare stared quizzically at the sound guy, tapped his microphone, and complained of the "weird noise" it was making. A curious gesture from a man who spent an hour-plus assaulting the gathered masses of future acid casualties with weirder than usual noises of his own creation. Heavy on the electron pulse-- thanks in part to the disconcerting lack of a single onstage guitar-- the often combative, occasionally tuneful, trance-inducingly beautiful show gave the sellout crowd a crack at watching three blank-faced dudes coax crashing thunder from their synths.

When they all-too-rarely dipped back, it was Sung Tongs tunes in a Here Comes the Indian style; an early-set spin through "Who Could Win a Rabbit?" erred closer to Outkast's "Gangsta Shit" than is fathomable the morning after, though set-closer "Leaf House" kept things proper. The abundance of fresh tracks showed a pulling back from Feels' elliptical ease; trunk-rattling bass, noise both white and kaleidoscopic, and one tune best described as a calypso scream. Avey seems to have let up on the scatting in favor of a genial growl, and Panda's underused melodies sound more oblique but no less ethereal than anything on Person Pitch. If these are Strawberry jams, Strawberry Jam's gonna blow some minds. But you didn't need me to tell you that.

AC:

05-18 Iowa City, IA - The Picador #
05-19 Omaha, NE - Sokol Underground #
05-20 Lawrence, KS - The Granada Theatre #
05-21 Denver, CO - Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom #
05-22 Salt Lake City, UT - In the Venue #
05-24 Albuquerque, NM - Launchpad #
05-25 Marfa, TX - The Marfa Ballroom #
05-26 Dallas, TX - The Granada Theater #
05-27 Austin, TX - Antone's #
05-28 Birmingham, AL - Bottletree #
05-29 Knoxville, TN - Bijou Theatre #
05-30 Charlottesville, VA - Satellite Ballroom #
06-01 New York, NY - South Street Seaport (Seaport Music Festival) *
07-11 London, England - The Coronet ^
07-19-22 Valencia, Spain - Benicàssim Festival

# with Sir Richard Bishop
* with Danielson
^ with Marnie Stern