I know it is impossible to pick a best song ever but we all certainly have a list of favorites. I always enjoy looking back at old picks and selecting new ones. I do not really have any criteria except that the song has to move me.
Over and over again through the last few years, I have felt this way about the song "Banshee Beat" by Animal Collective. It is a pivotal moment in FEELS,

 one of their most successful albums. The whole record is drenched in atmosphere but this song really steps it up a notch. It opens with some gently churning effects-laden guitar and a vocal which somehow seems both calm and yearning.

"There'll be time to get by to get dry after the swimming pool
There'll be time to just cry i wonder why it didnt work out
Therell be time to fish fry for letters by yours truly
Yours truly"

Around this time, some Christmas-y keyboards and gentle drumming drift into the mix. Avey takes this as a signal to emote the next part of the song with vocals that sound tender and nostalgic. The lyrics in this portion are so beautiful as they mix simple declarative statements of devotion with odd childish imagery.

"Someone in my dictionary's up to no good
I never find the very special words I should
So I have another party with a water glass
and I sit on all your actions its a birthing game
and I'll bet he needs a shower cause hes just like me
and the soldiers in the painting know your secret face
Well your parrot told me just how I can make you smile
Gonna let you do your thinking if you need awhile
but what I gave you made him get mad
A little bit funny how a thing like that
Could travel from one mouth in through another
and the next thing you know you gotta hear it from your brother and
The words they sting like a stump of old wasps
Remember when I said go throw the rock in there
and we ran through the woods to our good house
You forgot about the things that he could say like
I dont think that I like you anymore
Well I found new feelings at the feeling store
and I cant find you at our kissing place
and im scared of those new pair of eyes you have"

The next portion of the song is what could perhaps be thought of as a chorus. Avey brings such joy in his vocals to match the thrill of escape in the lyrics.

"So I duck out and go down to find the swimming pool
Hop a fence, leave the street and wet my feet I'll find a swimming pool
Cause when I'm snuffed out I doubt I'll find a swimming pool
Hop a fence, leave the street and wet my feet I'll find a swimming pool"

The next portion of the song changes the feeling of the song by adding some life philosophy. The narrator realizes that even though sometimes people give each other pain, in the end, feeling things is a positive experience because it is part of being alive.

"But I don't wish that I was dead
A very old friend of mine once said
that either way you look at it you have your fits
I have my fits but feeling is good
confusions not a kidney stone in my brain
but if were miscommunicating do we feel the same?
Then either way you look at it you have your fits
I have my fits but feeling is good"

Finally the song has a lyrical conclusion as the group sings the simple and most accurate way to describe a relationship in strange (though harmonized) voices:

"You gotta give a little you gotta get a little bit  "

With that, the song fades out the same way it came in, leaving the listener with the feeling that they have just been on a journey.

all of these lyrics were taken from songmeanings.net although they do seem to be right to me.

Today I saw the live action half of the Oscar nominated short films at my local highbrow cinema. This is my second year in a row going and if you have any interest in film at all, I highly recommend it. It is an extremely enjoyable experience to watch a compilation of great films on the big screen. My initial reaction to the films this year is that they felt a lot more light-hearted than last years entries.

First up was "Auf Der Stricke".

This was a German film which dealt with a man who is a security guard at a mall. We get an odd sense of dread as we watch him following a specific bookstore employee on all the video cameras until we realize that he's really just a shy guy in love. The film turns tragic however as he allows the woman's brother (whom he has mistaken for her love interests) to be beaten to death on a train. He then has to deal with his guilty conscious while living his dream of being the person she turns to for comfort. This film was the longest of the selections, clocking in at 30 minutes. Perhaps because of its length, it felt the most fully formed and it is my personal pick for the Oscar.

Next was "New Boy"

"New Boy" is an Irish film which tells the story of an African boy who has just started at a new school in Ireland. At first he is bullied until he and his peers bond while mocking their teacher. All of the children in the movie were great actors and it was a cute, simple story. It really could not be very complex at only fifteen minutes.

A strange follower to the comedic "New Boy" was "Spielzeugland"

Another German film, this is a short, underdeveloped Holocaust story. A mother tells her son that the Jewish citizens are being taken to Toyland to protect him from the harsh reality. He then becomes obsessed with the idea of going to this wonderful place with his Jewish best friend. When his mother wakes up and he is missing, she fears that he is on one of the trains. As a Nazi officer allows her to search the train that his friends' family is on, she realizes that he is not there but she tells the officer that her sons' friend is her child in order to save him. I really liked the opening shots of the spiral staircase with the sharp angles. It felt like an allusion to german expressionist film but unfortunately, the rest of the movie did not have such style.

"Grisen"

"Grisen" or "The Pig" is a great film from Denmark. It tells the charming story of an old man getting a colonoscopy. Across from his bed in his hospital room is a painting of a pig which he comes to think of as his guardian angel. When he gets a Muslim roomate, the painting is removed out of respect for their culture. This sparks a debate over tolerance versus personal freedom. This is my second choice for the Oscar because it really makes you think about an interesting idea and manages to remain fun to watch at the same time.

The show was closed with "Manon sur le bitume"

This is a short yet affecting French film which begins with a woman getting hit by a car while  riding a bicycle. As she lays dying on the asphalt, we get to see all of her final thoughts. What she wishes she said to her friends, who she would've left things to if they had a will, the dates of the last time she got caught in the rain and all of the little things that make up a human life. This film was extremely well made but I did not feel like it was as original as some of the other entries.

The Incredible String Band really takes the greatness glimpsed by the psychedelic period of many major 60's bands and brings the potential of the sound to full fruition. I don't even know what to say but I love this stuff to a ridiculous degree. In my opinion, these are the records to get:

The 5000 Spirits of The Layers of the Onion
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&

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
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Now that my undergrad days are behind me it has become pretty clear that Animal Collective is the defining band of my early 20's. Since I first heard Sung Tongs and Here Comes the Indian, I was completely hypnotized by their atmospheric, experimental pop music. After exiting the sound-worlds that they created, I often felt as if I had just had a spiritual experience: that both my mind and soul had been nourished. When they released their newest album Merriweather Post Pavilion early last month, it almost immediately went out of print. Based on this evidence, they seem to now be a pretty popular band. When did this happen? To my ears, the music sounds as experimental as ever (except now the beats are a bit more danceable). By the way, I do not recommend keeping the album next to you in the car, I found myself constantly distracted by the optical illusion cover art.

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It opens with the extremely atmospheric love song "In the Flowers". The song is based around an eerie childlike riff and tons of odd atmospheric noises. This is all held together by one of Avey's most restrained vocals until it all explodes into frantic drumming and what sounds to me like heavily treated carnival music. Next is the first single, "My Girls". I really did not like this song when I first heard it. Where it succeeds (for me) is in its lyrical content. Panda Bear sings about wanting to get a house for his wife and daughter. I have found that once you are sold on these lyrics, the rest of the song becomes joyous to listen to. Panda's signature droning repetition is backed by an extremely dance-influenced bass part which makes it their most accessible song to date. Next is one of my favorite songs on the album, "Also Frightened". A really fat bassline mixes with tribal drumming, weird noises, harmonic vocals and lots of reverb. Once the song builds to the chorus "Are You Also Frightened?", it's impossible for it not to be stuck in your head. "Summertime Clothes" opens with a distortion riff that reminds me a lot of the Battles LP. It then smoothly segues into a great song which sounds to me like the most traditionally Animal Collective song on here. It even features Avey's heavily treated vocals. "Daily Routine" is another Panda Bear track so that means more droning melodies. One thing that I think is really interesting about this song is the way the vocals play off of the percussion at certain points, as if Panda's singing is echoing the drum. As with most of Panda's songs it goes on a little bit too long for me. It does really work in the context of the album though. As "Bluish" begins, a very pretty vocal melody and nice lyrics seem to weave in and out of the chugging sound cloud that is the rest of the music. I really love when the playful keyboard lines come into this one. This song reminds me the most of Feels-era AC out of anything else on this album. The next song, "Guy's Eyes" starts out sounding like the short track from the People EP, "My Favorite Colors", it then turns into a great song which sounds like it's being sang around. You know, the way people used to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat"... Around. This song is definitely one of my favorites on the album as well. The song "Taste" begins with distant tones and a scratching sound. It then turns into a really bizarre sounding electronic island music. As if robots were inventing a new variation of reggae. The vocals are, of course, more pop structured with harmonies and whatnot. I really like the line in the chorus "Am I really all the things that are outside of me?". "Lion in a Coma" is based around a mouth harp sample and a frantic Avey vocal. The first time I realized it was a play on words I actually laughed out loud. I know it's obvious but I can be pretty slow sometimes. The penultimate track, "No More Running" is AC's version of a normal song. It's a very traditionally structured pop rock song, however, every single empty space in the sound is filled with weird flickering noises of what sounds like a swamp to me. "Brother Sport" is Panda Bear's frantic closer. It ridiculously sticks in my head each time I hear it. Apparently it is a song he wrote for his brother about dealing with their father's death. It has Panda's signature repetition (how many times will I write that line in this ramble?) and also a frantic energy which sounds so happy that it is easy to get sucked into. When the middle section starts and the machine noises come in, it still retains an organic feel. I do not even know how it does this but it all leads up to the closing chant which is one of my favorite moments of Animal Collective's career so far.

In conclusion, this is not my favorite Animal Collective record but it is still an amazing album. If they are getting popular while still making music this interesting, then I am all for it. I am still a little worried about how crowded their show may be and what type of people will be there but that won't stop me from being one of them. I can not wait to see what they come up with next.

Michel Gondry is such an amazingly creative director. We got a sense of his talent for unique visuals from his music video output: