Animal Collective
FloriDada
Domino Recording Company

Four years after Centipede Hz (2012) the playful Animal Collective is ready with a new album, their 10th entitled Painting With. Painting With was released on February 19 and we will come back to it with a full review next LK issue. While we are waiting, here is the first single off the album and the opening track of the album, "FloriDada".

"FloriDada" was launched on November 30 (it has been followed by another two 'singles' since the new year, namely "Lying in the Grass" and "Golden Gal"), and this is for sure the sound of Animal Collective as we know them. Love'em, hate'em - they will return, again and again and again. This time, Deakin (a.k.a. Josh Dibb) has left(?) the collective, leaving the fun boy three being Avey Tare (a.k.a. David Portner), Panda Bear (a.k.a. Noah Lennox), and Geologist (a.k.a. Brian Weitz) for now. Since their last album both Avey Tare and Panda Bear have had fun on their own (or along with other players). "FloriDada" is one energetic, fast spinning, Beach Boys-tinted, Dadaist pop song. It is as sunny and catchy as the title implies, with a fast lyrical stream. Like usually with Animal Collective, the song is presenting whipsmart, quickstep lyrics and word playfulness. They (or Avey Tare) wrote the song as a reaction to the joking about Florida - the prejudice of and stereotypes (easily) made/formed about Floridians. Well, the song could be seen as a comment towards making stereotypes in general - of people living anywhere, in whatever place/country/state around the world. The lyrics are indeed amusing and they leave you thinking: Hmmm, I have been to this place...? Or...?

...'I found myself there a collagin' with all of the human race
A dancer from Ghana smiling in Tijuana
Frankenstein java with touches of Prada and corn on the plates
A smear of gardenia in the fair hair of Sweden
And maybe I actually visited some sort of mythical place
Or was it a future connected by sutures
Oh let's go get lost in the image I made of the everywhere place
I see the lads from Osaka dyed in FloriDada...

Yes, this could most definitely be somewhere you have been to, in some city near you... "FloriDada" is a magnificent return by Animal Collective. Hope this goes for the entire album. And, you know, sometimes are stereotypicality true, and necessary - just for the sake of feeding us with fun and madness. It is for sure an absurd world we live in.

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