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Album Reviews
Album Review: Remember Remember – Remember Remember (Rock Action)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 24 November 2008
I am beginning to think that Animal Collective are well on their way to sacred cow touchstone band status (a la the Velvet Underground). So many recent albums I have heard are – in some way – indebted to the acid victim Brooklyn band. Remember Remember’s album is another artefact to add to the cannon of work. So much of it is Animal Collective-lite instrumentation that, whilst being complicated and displaying a high level of musicianship, it fails to imbue any discrete personality. And, possibly due to the heavily produced and carefully composed nature of Remember Remember, they don’t possess the cracks of accidental brilliance that this genre can offer. Their songs are pretty and often epic, with cinematic sweeps of psychedelic harmonics and the what now seems to be the obligatory twinkles of reverb ready guitars or triangles etc. But it remains quite twee and peaceful, with songs like ‘Fountain’ reminiscent of Durutti Column, if Martin Hannet hadn’t stolen Vinny Reilly’s Space Echo. ‘Mountain’, meanwhile, parodies Múm and Yann Tiersen so closely, either band could arguably claim royalties (if they were bastards). Apparently, the album is intended as a modern classical work, which could explain its more staid nature and sonic nods to Tiersen, Eno and Glass. Yet this album inhabits a musical compromise between the weird and the conservatoire, and never exceeds the sum of its influences. Nevertheless, their live shows are supposed to be filled with Kaufmann-esque weirdness, which I am excited to investigate. PG
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