Month: January 2022

Coldplay and BTS sound like a natural pairing on their collaboration “My Universe,” but it didn’t always feel that way to Chris Martin.

Martin guested on Ellen yesterday and during his conversation with the host, he explained he didn’t initially think a BTS joint effort would be a good idea, but eventually, the “weirdness” of it made the prospect more appealing to him:

“Someone said to me, ‘Oh, BTS asked you to do a song for them.’ That’s what I got told. At the time, I was like, ‘That’s never going to work ever. How are we going to fit these two things together?’ Then the idea started to seem really attractive in its weirdness. And then one day, the right song just kind of arrived and I just knew at the time, ‘OK, this is the song we’re supposed to do with BTS and it’s supposed to be about people who can’t be together or told they shouldn’t be together or forced to live in separate places.’ So then it felt really natural, and it’s still quite a bizarre… we look like their gym teachers, but we love them. For something that could have seemed so artificial, it turned out being one of the most real feelings and I genuinely love those people.”

Elsewhere on the show, Coldplay performed a stripped-down rendition of the song, with Martin on piano and the rest of the band on guitars and bass, so check that out below and find Martin’s interview above.

Coldplay is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Despite being one of America’s most beloved and kindest actors, Keanu Reeves is facing significant backlash in China that could tank the box office for The Matrix Resurrections. Shortly after Resurrections premiered in China, Reeves’ participation in a Tibet House U.S. benefit concert was announced, which severely angered Chinese nationalists. Supporting Tibet independence is a major taboo to the Chinese communist party, and seeing Reeves being involved in the movement sparked threats of a boycott that could hurt Resurrections, which was already struggling in Chinese theaters.

“How can Keanu Reeves not understand this and take part in a pro-Tibet independence concert? Aren’t these celebrities afraid of losing the China market?” one user wrote on the popular Chinese social media site Weibo as others begin to pile on The Matrix actor and any celebrities involved in the pro-Tibet concert. Via Variety:

“These high school graduates in Hollywood can’t even identify where Tibet is on the map, but they ‘care’ if people there are leading a good life,” another user wrote on Weibo.

There was no lack of personal attacks on Reeves. “He’s already a has-been. What kind of market value does he have?” one user questioned. “Tibet belongs to China,” another account stressed.

According to Variety, Reeves has yet to respond to the backlash, and he’s still listed as a participant for the concert which will take place in early March.

(Via Variety)

Let’s get this out of the way upfront: Pam And Tommy is a blast. It’s a throwback to the time when the Internet barely existed, but it could be used to propagate a stolen celebrity sex tape that set tons of wheels in motion and threw a wrench into a love story that strongly resembles the Angelina and Billy Bobs and the Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Foxes of later days. And it’s sort-of a heist story, which could have been all fun and games if it hadn’t hurt someone in such a devastating way. So, it’s a trashy, guilty pleasure of a show that sparks some hindsight-guilt about not being able to look away from someone else’s misery. The eight-part limited series could also, in places, make you really think about heavier issues like consent (through a 2022 lens) and how “wild” women are positioned vs. their equally (or even more so) wild male counterpoints.

With that said, my reactions to this trash-masterpiece are a direct response to fears that I had about the series, so let’s break them down that way:

(1) Is It A Show That Lives Up To The Trailer? The art of trailer editing ain’t no joke. We have all seen trailers that would have been better off staying trailers (I recall vaguely thinking that the Mark Wahlberg-starring Max Payne looked cool, my god it was not), or trailers that feel like they show off the entirety of a film or limited series. The best ones accurately represent the quality/enjoyability of a project without giving the whole thing away, and I mean, c’mon. This show’s trailer is phenomenal and a testament to everything (bad) that people loved about the mid-1990s, a time of too much garishness, which we can all vicariously roll around in while feeling filthy. And speaking of filthy…

There’s Sebastian Stan really going for it as Tommy, walking around with tattoos and his tush (and more) hanging out. To elaborate on more, Jason Mantzoukas voices Tommy’s penis, which is as amazing of an experience to behold as you can imagine. There’s Lily James pulling off an almost spooky dead-ringer version of Pam. There’s Nick Offerman and Seth Rogen’s mulletted bad guys, who don’t turn out to be as satisfying as the trailer promises, mostly because there’s some complexity to be discussed (and we will).

The trailer could have led us astray, but it did not. As strange as it sounds to emphasize this point, a lot of the offbeat, salacious offerings on streaming fail to live up to what’s promised in trailers. Remember that Sasquatch trailer that made people really want to watch a weed-infused Bigfoot documentary? And then you didn’t hear too much about it because the weirdest stuff was in the trailer. Well, Pam and Tommy poised itself for danger in the same way, but there’s a lot more there. It’s truly stuffed with madness.

(2) The Feels Stuff: With all of the above said, this is all based upon a real-life story (as originally detailed in 2014 within a Rolling Stone piece by Amanda Chicago Lewis). Pam Anderson did not co-sign this adaptation, which adds an extra layer to watching. And obviously, we’re talking about real people, to whom something dreadful happened. Real intimate moments got captured on tape and stolen and distributed to the masses.

Real people with real emotions. Real rawness and true conflict and pieces moving in the background. Many details are, yes, dramatized and may not match what actually happened, but the spirit, presumably, stays real. It does, however, feels a little bit icky to paint this as a big sympathy story for Pam — although it certainly is at times — because she’s already been subjected to enough bullsh*t already. Not only did her personal life become very public, but geez, all of the Baywatch and Barb Wire fallout is really something to watch. No one ever called her Oscar material, but girlfriend had drive and a work ethic, and we might never know if she had could have moved past eye-candy roles.

Pam largely gets a raw deal in this story. So all we can do is this: Judge ourselves accordingly by our responses to what we see. Every woman has a valid right to have a response to what happens to Pam with the sex tape — which she and Tommy could have never imagined would fall into the wrong hands and spread through the fledgling Interwebs — and every woman who goes some similarly horrid thing (and this is an early instance of revenge porn, propagated into oblivion by Rogen’s character, Rand Gauther) has the right to feel endlessly violated. Yet Pam and Tommy threads the needle well. It doesn’t get preachy but it also doesn’t shy away from harsh truths, at least as it supposes them to be. And in the end, it’s up to the viewer to decide everything. The show stands apart from the E! True Hollywood Story approach, that’s for sure.

Let’s just say that this show does a fine job of not glossing over Pamela’s palpable discomfort over being repeatedly humiliated by this sex tape, but it doesn’t beat us over the head with it. And as unfortunate as the reality was (again, they never reasonably could have expected this tape to get out), this show gives this the most sensitive treatment as one could expect while still taking the salacious route.

3. Are the villains worth the price of admission? Here’s where the weakness lies. Gauthier’s trajectory is perhaps my least favorite part of this show, even though Rogen kills the role, for the most part. He’s very good at injecting emotion into a guy who managed to roll a giant safe away (what a visual gag) without getting caught. I’m not sure how on earth this could have gone down with the sheer size of this safe, which held fancy watches, a guitar, even the “wedding bikini” inside. But his path and evolution do not feel authentic. Nick Offerman is fine as the porn-producing godfather, Milton Berle (a.k.a., “Uncle Miltie”) of the show, even though he is ultimately underutilized in this story. And who knew that this dude could rock a fanny pack so hard.

(4) Is This Series Actually Perfectly Cast, Or Do They Simply Look The Parts? The hair and makeup teams did the thing, but it’s damn well cast, too. From Taylor Schilling (whose porn star character appears to be a throwaway at first but who ends up doling out some necessary perspective) and Andrew Dice Clay, even the smaller roles work. Lily James nails everything she does, from the flashbacks of Pam’s talent scout discovery to her first Playboy shoot, all the way to the uncomfortable moments on the Baywatch set to moments where she’s asked to justify how she did public nudity in other contexts. She must show the audience how terrible it can be to be completely in love, only to end up a casualty of a stupid, avoidable beef between two men.

Sebastian Stan manages to toe the line of being the starting point of that beef. Tommy Lee was a jackass in a lot of ways but he’s essentially also a doofus with too much money and power. Stan must, as well, deliver occasional flashes of heartfelt emotion to show us that Tommy does truly love his wife, even if he loves himself more. And Tommy feels sorry for himself several times along the way, during contexts that are best watched, rather than spoiled, while also being the owner of a talking penis. Stan’s so-called “Sunday workout” also paid off in spades. The man has a way with drumsticks.

As the bad guys, again, Offerman ultimately plays a facilitator of helping Rand Gautlier strike a near-fatal blow in that dumb beef with Tommy. We don’t get to see Offerman do too terribly much, unfortunately, but Seth Rogen does well with being the every-mulletted-dude, who does an incredibly vengeful, immensely sh*tty thing that exposes him as very bad person. And he’s also a punchline, which adds to a careful balance that Rogen deserves credit for because it couldn’t have been an easy role, for sure.

(5) And The True Emmy Goes To…? Jason Mantzoukas as the talking penis. Zouks reminds us that even though very serious subjects arise in Pam and Tommy, at least the penis had no ulterior motive, and we can all lighten up and enjoy this show, guilt free.

‘Pam and Tommy’ will debut with three episodes on Feb. 2, 2022.

Many believe that one of the worst things the late John McCain ever did was inflict Sarah Palin on this country. In 2008, seemingly overnight, Palin—then the governor of Alaska—went from a pretty much completely unknown political entity to aspiring Vice President of the United States. And once she got a taste of the spotlight, she hasn’t wanted to go away, whether that means by threatening to run for office again or appearing on The Masked Singer.

But in the current moment, Palin has two bigger priorities: Her defamation suit against The New York Times, and spreading her current COVID infection across as wide a swath of New York City as she possibly can.

Palin sued The New York Times in 2017 over an op-ed which she claims falsely connected her to the 2011 Tucson mass shooting that killed six people and wounded 14 others, including politician Gabby Giffords. She is currently in New York for jury selection, which was set to begin this past Monday, but had to be postponed because Palin had tested positive for COVID. Yet that didn’t stop Palin from going about her normal daily routines, including eating out at Elio’s, a popular Italian eatery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

As Mediaite reports, Palin was seated in a heated, outdoor area for her Wednesday night meal, but had eaten inside the restaurant on Saturday night, one day before announcing that she had tested positive for COVID. Even if she was unaware of her illness at the time, Palin was still in violation of New York City’s dining vaccine mandate, which requires proof of vaccination for all indoor diners. Palin, of course, is notably unvaccinated—and proud of it. She previously, and rather short-sightedly, noted that she’d only get vaccinated “over my dead body” (at which point it would be too late, Sarah!) This bout with COVID marks the politician-turned-laughingstock’s second go-around with the virus.

The New York Times (of all outlets) reports that the city will not be investigating how Palin ended up sitting inside for a meal. And according to a statement from Elio’s manager, Luca Guaitolini—which was sent to Mediaite—Palin’s Wednesday night return visit was really more of a chance to apologize.

“Tonight Sarah Palin returned to the restaurant to apologize for the fracas around her previous visit,” the statement read. “In accordance with the vaccine mandate and to protect our staff, we seated her outdoors. We are a restaurant open to the public, and we treat all civilians the same.”

Jury selection in Palin’s case has been rescheduled for February 3. In the meantime, we have two words for Palin: Uber Eats!

(Via Mediaite)

Oh boy. After the green M&M caused a ruckus with her “more dynamic, progressive” look (admittedly silly new shoes) for 2022, there was sure to be comparative hell to pay when Minnie Mouse decided to take a break from wearing a dress. As PEOPLE reports, this is a special-event situation (for Disneyland Paris’ 30th anniversary events) where Minnie will leave her usual red-and-white, polka-dotted outfit at home and step out in a blue-and-white, polka-dotted pantsuit, including trousers and a blazer designed by Stella McCartney.

It’s not as though Minnie is ditching the dress. There’s no indication that this will happen at all, but as one can imagine, someone was going to be aghast. And over on Fox News, occasional guest (as well as Cardi B foe, Daily Wire host, and performative outrage artist) Candace Owens went off the rails while explaining how disturbed she felt by this new outfit, which she apparently feels is a travesty and a way to rewrite the social order and “destroy fabrics of our society.”

No, really. Candace believes that “they” (the Left) are trying to destroy what conservatives love in order to demonstrate progress and how the world is just fine despite inflation and so on:

“They are taking all of these things that nobody was offended by. It’s like they have to get rid of them and destroy them because they’re bored. You know, they’re absolutely bored. They’re trying to destroy fabrics of our society, pretending that there’s issues so everybody looks over here. ‘Look at Minnie Mouse. Don’t look at inflation, Jesse. Look at Minnie Mouse.’ The world is going forward because you’ve got her in a pantsuit.”

Because, as Candace insists, if people see “the real problem” being addressed (Minnie Mouse’s outfits), then they’ll forget all about empty aisles at the grocery store and the price of bacon. Owens’ argument is beyond parody at this point and just too much fun for people to enjoy dragging.

At least Owens gave people plenty to laugh about on this chilly January morning.

And as some people pointed out, it sure looked like Owens was wearing a pantsuit on Fox News while she complained about Minnie’s pantsuit. How bizarre.

Just because you still don’t know what the hell an NFT is doesn’t mean that Johnny Depp doesn’t understand them. Or maybe he’s just as confused, too, but knows that there’s some money to be made from them. Whatever the case: The Pirates of the Caribbean star is following in the footsteps of Lindsay Lohan, Ozzy Osbourne, and Michael Cohen (but not Home Improvement‘s Richard Karn) by getting into the NFT game.

As you may or may not know, in addition to being an actor, Depp has a number of side gigs. In addition to being the owner of West Hollywood’s (in)famous Viper Room, where he has often appeared on stage with the Hollywood Vampires, a supergroup he co-founded in 2015 with music legends Alice Cooper and Joe Perry. Depp also fancies himself a bit of an artist, and has often created portraits of his friends and loved ones, and it’s those images he’ll now be making available as NFTs.

As Page Six reports, Depp is selling more than 10,000 (!) NFTs of his art, which include a few self-portraits plus art of his daughter, actor Lily-Rose Depp. Among the friends and collaborators whose pop art likenesses will also be included are Tim Burton, Hunter S. Thompson, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, and Heath Ledger.

“I’ve always used art to express my feelings and to reflect on those who matter most to me, like my family, friends and people I admire,” Depp said in a statement. “My paintings surround my life, but I kept them to myself and limited myself. No one should ever limit themselves.”

According to Page Six, 25 percent of all proceeds will be donated to a host of charitable organizations, including the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, and The Gonzo Trust (which honors Depp’s longtime friend/hero Hunter S. Thompson). It’s the first time the public will get to peek at Depp’s artwork.

“Having the opportunity to salute my supporters and support the charities that have been so important to my family is an incredible gift,” Depp said. “I hope we can create a new community of friends around these NFTs. My involvement in the NFT space has just begun.”

The art, which Depp has dubbed “Never Fear Truth” NFTs, can be purchased here. Something tells us Brian Cox will not be among the buyers.

(Via Page Six)

“Speechless” isn’t generally a word one associates with perpetually butthurt Marjorie Taylor Greene. But it’s truly the best way to describe the controversial Georgia representative and noted conspiracy theorist’s reaction to being called out by a fellow Georgian while she was taking live calls on Night Talk, a talk show on UCTV, a Georgia cable access network.

Greene surprised pretty much everyone when she just sat idly by and listened to a caller note how terrible she is at her job. As Raw Story reports, the unnamed caller was short and direct with her comments when she called into the show to declare: “I just want to say thank God for Joe Biden. [Marjorie Taylor Greene] is an embarrassment to the state of Georgia.”

While Greene didn’t say anything, she smirked and threw enough side-eye at the camera to make it clear that she wasn’t amused. Go ahead and bask in this highly unusual moment.

While the co-hosts weren’t about to censor anyone’s opinion, they did want to sort of have the back of their unpredictable guest, so noted, “Well, we all have our opinions.”

“Amen to that,” said the caller. “And I’ve got mine.”

You can watch the clip below:

(Via Raw Story)

Britney Spears and Madonna were behind perhaps the biggest pop culture event of 2003 when they kissed on stage during the MTV Video Music Awards. Now, nearly two decades later, Madonna is interested in re-creating that moment.

During a recent Instagram Live Q&A session, Madonna was asked if she would ever do a world tour again and she responded, “Hell yeah, I have to. Stadium, baby. Me and Britney, what about that? Not sure if she’d be into it, but it would be really cool. We could, like, reenact the original kiss.”

As for Spears, her future with performing live is unclear. In late 2020, her then-lawyer Samuel Ingham reportedly insisted Spears would not perform live again until her father was no longer her conservator. Then, last June, a fan asked Spears in an Instagram Live broadcast if she’ll ever take the stage again and Spears responded, “I have no idea.” Even after Spears’ father was suspended from his role as conservator in September 2021, Spears was reportedly still in no rush to perform again.

Spears’ conservatorship has come to end since then and there has been no indication from Spears that she has plans to get back to performing live, so it remains to be seen if Madonna’s idea of a joint tour is enticing to Spears.

When was the last time you heard somebody complain about hipsters? Remember when that was a thing? When people complain about hipsters in 2022, they use a different word: millennial. Beyond the generational connotations of the term, “millennial” is also assumed to mean “trend-hopping city-dwelling striver in their 20s who older people find highly annoying.” That’s what “hipster” used to signify.

Hipster hysteria peaked around 2010. That year, New York magazine published an article called “What Was The Hipster?” that, perhaps presciently, indicated that the phenomenon had already peaked. Written in the dense language of an anthropological study, “What Was The Hipster?” included a section on the so-called “Hipster Primitive Moment” that “recovered the sound and symbols of pastoral innocence with an irony so fused into the artworks it was no longer visible.” Indie rock was singled out for leading “the artistry of this phase,” and certain attributes of notable aughts-era bands were enumerated — they have a thing for nature, they are bit a childish, they are obsessed with music of the 1960s, they are theatrical, they sometimes wear funny costumes, they are basically hippies (though likely won’t identify as such).

One band singled out in the article, of course, was Animal Collective, among the best and most acclaimed indie acts of the era, whose breakthrough 2004 album Sung Tongs was once described by Pitchfork’s Mike Powell (in far more sympathetic fashion) as a “children’s album” made up of “sing-alongs, nursery rhymes [and] lullabies.” AnCo’s cultural significance peaked along with that of hipster hysteria, with their most commercially successful LP, 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, which also topped that year’s Pazz & Jop critic’s poll in the Village Voice.

Of course, this being the age of hipster hysteria, there were also plenty of people who hated Merriweather Post Pavilion, an album that streamlined the anarchy of past Animal Collective releases with canny electro-pop hooks. This included the braintrust at the Village Voice, which ran a column adjacent to the poll (which was also topped by other “Hipster Primitive” acts such as Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors) admonishing voters for creating “the most whimsically insular prissy-pants indie-rock-centric Top 10 albums list in Pazz & Jop history.” But the conversation about Animal Collective went beyond merely debating their musical merits. Back then, people questioned whether people actually liked them, or if this was an illusion created by chattering nerds on the internet.

Some things to remember about this moment for those who weren’t around or have forgotten: The record industry was in free fall and presumed dead. Pop stardom seemed like it could be a thing of the past (sort of). Streaming had not yet arrived to save the day (sort of). Therefore, you couldn’t just peek at an artist’s clicks to get a sense of their reach. Meanwhile, terms like “monoculture” were still used with a straight face. Facebook was in the early stages of being adopted by boomers. People were just beginning to understand that the internet didn’t so much connect them to everybody as much as encase in them in a bubble with a select group of somebodies. The world we’re sick of now was busy being born.

In the gap between the collapse of the traditional media and the rise of our current social media-streaming-algorithm-clickapalooza, it really was hard to discern what exactly “mattered.” In a way this still happens today whenever someone distinguishes “Twitter reality” from reality reality or expresses pride in their ignorance over the latest TikTok fad. But in the age of hipster hysteria, the contempt for internet-fueled stars was rooted in genuine confusion over a rapidly changing paradigm. In the case of Animal Collective, whose thorny and unwieldy (and, at its best, mind-blowing) experimental pop at times seemed expressly designed to irritate listeners, the issue was compounded: Does anybody for real like this shit? was a sentiment felt by many.

You can feel that attitude permeating the Voice’s crack about “insular prissy-pants indie-rock.” But the complaints also came from inside the house. The blogger Carles, pranksterish proprietor of the zeitgesit-y blog (here’s that word again) Hipster Runoff, called Animal Collective “a band created by/for/on the internet.” While Carles’ mix of deadpan irony and genuine criticism could be difficult to decode, this was clearly meant as a putdown. “Where does Animal Collective realistically sit in this hierarchy of critical acclaim vs. pop appeal vs. actually selling albums?” he wrote in 2009. “I’m not sure if this internet-centric praise economy for Animal Collective means that they are ‘bigger’ than I think they are, or if we are just so caught up in what’s happening on the internet that we fail to realize ‘these conceptual bands don’t matter to most people and probably never will.’”

The sum total of the admonishments from the Village Voice and Hipster Runoff (among other combatants) coming at Merriweather Post Pavilion from different directions is that the referees were thoroughly worked. Never again would critics dare to put a group as strange, unpredictable, noisy, and polarizing as Animal Collective at the center of the conversation. Today, it’s painfully easy to see how popular things are. We live in a world in which streaming figures for any song are available for all to see. (“My Girls” has been played more than 43 million times on Spotify — not bad!) And this has established a hierarchy that has made it all but impossible for a band like AnCo to bug as many people as they once did.

It’s hard for me to believe that all of this didn’t affect Animal Collective. Formed in Baltimore in 2003, AnCo never seemed particularly comfortable in the spotlight, and being turned into a lightning rod must have felt like an odd turn of events for dudes content to screw around endlessly with floor toms and delay pedals. In 2012, they released their ninth album, Centipede Hz, and the consensus that it was a disappointment formed as quickly as the rush to declare Merriweather Post Pavilion a masterpiece had been three years prior.

When I interviewed Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, at the time, I asked him the same question several different ways: Did you do this on purpose? Are you intentionally trying to chase most of your audience away? And Lennox said “no” in several different ways. But I didn’t believe him then, and I’m not sure I believe him now. Animal Collective undeniably was entering a wilderness period. They put out another album, 2016’s Painting With, that also garnered mixed reviews. But by then the furor around the band had quieted considerably. Even the band members — Lennox, Dave Portner, Josh Dibb, and Brian Weitz — appeared more interested in collaborating on side projects and solo albums than laboring under the (the sometimes bothersome) Animal Collective banner.

Now comes Time Skiffs, the first Animal Collective album in six years, which comes out next week. I don’t know if this record will reach listeners beyond their cult of devotees, but it certainly sounds like an attempt by the animals to leave the wilderness. After two difficult (though in my estimation underrated) records, Time Skiffs is the sequel to Merriweather Post Pavilion that many fans probably would have wanted a decade ago.

What do I mean by that? Let’s start with the pair of songs that open the album. They are both bottom-heavy, harmony-rich, and immediate indie-pop songs with grabby choruses in the vein of “My Girls” and “Summertime Girls.” The basslines are slippery and the synths are warm and zippy. It’s pretty much as close to “normal” as Animal Collective gets, and it’s remarkable how much of Time Skiffs colors within those very same lines. As the album unfolds, tracks like “Walker” and “We Go Back” amble along at the same amiable mid-tempo pace. Animal Collective’s music no longer emulates the sonic meltdowns of Brian Wilson’s most drugged-out Smile outtakes. Time Skiffs signals the beginning of their Full House period.

Of course, sanding the rough and wooly edges from the music is a “for better or worse” proposition with this band. An essential element of Animal Collective — and what links them to the jam bands to which detractors once compared them as an attempted insult — is their willingness to fail in pursuit of some transcendent (or simply foolish) experiment. They were exciting because their music always teetered on the brink of a complete shit show; oftentimes, it was a deliberate shit show that the listener was asked to piece together into music in their own imaginations. The way that melodies suddenly arrive from out of the chaos before being swallowed up again in violent fits of screaming and percussion on masterpieces such as 2005’s Feels and 2007’s Strawberry Jam make those records exhilarating listens even now. It’s why I’ve come to appreciate even the maligned 2010s albums, which for all of their faults still throb with a pounding, unruly, and unceasingly questing energy.

Time Skiffs sometimes sounds a little, well, straight by comparison. What’s perverse about this record is that it’s the “accessible” comeback that arrives 10 years after the moment when it have had the most impact. We know for sure exactly how many care about Animal Collective now, and it’s a rather select group.

But if I may address my fellow Collectivists: They still are capable of sounding only like themselves. Yes, the album’s most experimental track, “Strung With Everything,” doesn’t hit the same dynamic peaks of Strawberry Jam. And the album’s prettiest number “Prester John” can’t approach the breathtaking ambient tunes on Feels. But if this album proves anything, it’s that the old assertion that these guys serve up “pastoral innocence infused with irony” was always a load of bunk. Animal Collective’s music has forever sounded to my ears like an attempt to move beyond conventional rock song structures in order to express pure and unfettered emotion, like peeling away the skin, muscles, and nervous system from the human body to expose the raw, primal, beating heat underneath.

There is something “child-like” about that, I suppose, though on Time Skiffs there’s no mistaking that this is a band with some mileage on the tires. What it does not resemble, however, is anything remotely “hipster.” Even back in 2009, when the biggest song from their biggest record was about being a dad, they were too earnest for that tag. Rather, they are like their namesake: wild, guileless, and free.