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Our annual Non-American Music Marathon kicks off today at noon and will go on for 36 hours straight! 

By U92 Asst. Music Director Nick Koban-Hogue

Animal Collective, a neo-psych band from Baltimore Maryland, is not an unfamiliar name in the music community. 10 studio albums dating back to their pre-formation experimental piece Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished have left a big impact on the scene. Their most recent effort, Painting With, looks to continue the legacy of almost unanimous critical acclaim, albeit in a slightly different way.

In the past, the group has used music to play with our souls and force us to partake in the feelings they are trying to convey through sound. Their early works are a bit more abrasive than the Animal Collective that reached early college radio and indie success. These albums brought just as much emotion as later pieces, but in a way that turned many listeners off of their sound.

After those original three works, their style began to consistently change and shift based on the underlying themes of the record. Painting With does precisely that, by employing similar instrumentation to a brand new mood in their discography, one of sheer happiness. Their sound always tends to mirror their personal lives, and over the course of their career the band members have gone through a lot of changes. Lead members Panda Bear and Avey Tare are now 37 and 34 respectively. They’ve moved past their old experimental selves, and many people, especially longtime fans, fail to recognize that.

This album is distinctly happy. The record opens with a consistent and fun, jumpy beat that can’t help but to draw a smile and a little dance from the listener. Other tracks head in stranger directions than the singles from the album, but their bright, shimmery sound resonates through the dense layers of samples. Tracks on this album force you to look back on your own life in bright, shimmering bliss and ask you why you didn’t always see the world that way. Animal Collective have asked themselves that question enough to fill up this beautiful 42 minute sonic journey.

Many critics have written this album off as being another flop, akin to their 2012 album Centipede Hz. Painting With doesn’t shy away from using abrasive samples and sounds; however, this record is meant to be enjoyed while in a similar state of self-induced bliss as the writers were experiencing. If listeners go into this album expecting the dark and haunting instrumentation of some of their more brooding records, they will be sorely disappointed. Animal Collective has never been the kind of band to dwell on their successes or care about whether or not the music they put out is successful at all. This album doesn’t care if you like it or if it’s your least favorite of their releases; it simply aims to make you happy.

Recently, I was lucky enough to experience one of their live performances in Columbus, Ohio. Hearing these songs performed by an unusually peppy Avey, Panda, and Geologist served to forward the message of this record even further. During their live performance, not only did they play many of the tracks from Painting With, but they also had reformed versions of many other songs from their back catalog. These included tracks from Feels, Spirit They’re Gone… and Merriweather Post Pavilion. Hearing these brighter, happier reimaginings of their earlier songs begged the question, what if they had been this happy for their entire career? What would their earlier albums sound like if they were put through this lens? Here’s praying for a Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Returned sometime in the not so distant future.

8.5/10

By U92 Hip-Hop Director Cody Roane

If Kanye West’s 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was a statement on his inner-most desires, his newly released The Life of Pablo demonstrates how those fantasies became a reality.

West’s widely anticipated follow up to 2013’s Yeezus was released Friday to much fervor -- exclusively on the music streaming service Tidal. The album was supposed to be released digitally and physically later this week, but West tweeted, “My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale…You can only get it on Tidal.”

How much weight West’s tweets hold is still in question. The build-up to the release of TLOP was rife with controversy: the album title was changed weekly, track list changed almost daily, and Kanye ignored the release date after premiering the album at his Madison Square Garden fashion show. One could argue this is a sign of the times for the music industry.

The marketing and release of TLOP follows suit from the style and pace of his seventh studio album, Yeezus. West begins triumphantly with the opening track “Ultralight Beam” where quite possibly the best feature of the album appears by way of rising Chicago MC, Chance the Rapper. West sings on the hook, “We on an ultralight beam/This is a God dream,” setting the precedent for an otherworldly experience by way of a God figure.

With the title, West also likens himself to Pablo Picasso, considered to be one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Ultimately, this album serves as a display of not only his current self, but all his previous selves and visions. TLOP works as an exclamation point to Kanye’s career thus far, the pinnacle of his artistry. His infamous soul samples from The College Dropout and Late Registration are found on tracks like “Father Stretch My Hands Pt.1”, “Famous” and the previously released single featuring Kendrick Lamar, “No More Parties in LA.”

West draws on his Yeezus days with stripped down drums and atmospheric vocals on tracks like “Feedback” and “Freestyle 4.”

Many of the songs bob, weave and change direction throughout the album, emulating West’s consciousness. Songs will suddenly change tempo and sound halfway through, going in a completely new direction before coming back to where they started. This is seen in tracks like “Pt. 2” where a Laurie Anderson sample suddenly comes in towards the end and then switches back to the original sample, only to end with a sudden fade out.

West stays true to his witty and controversial lyricism with standouts such as, “Now if I f**k this model/ And she just bleached her a*****e/ And I get bleach on my T-shirt/ I’mma feel like an a*****e,” from “Father Stretch my Hands Pt. 1” and “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that b***h famous.” West stays true to speaking his mind and isn’t that the role of an artist?

West once again uses features well. West seems to bring the best out of every artist he works with, knowing how to bring out their A game. Chance the Rapper and Kendrick Lamar come on with the best features, while Chris Brown gets the award for sneakiest feature in “Waves.” His higher pitched auto-tune complementing West’s more hardened vocals on the Chance penned track. The “fake Future” that is Desiigner bodes well on “Freestyle 4” while Andre 3000’s background vocals set the rhythmic tone for “30 Hours.” Kanye continues to show loyalty to longtime collaborator Kid Cudi, even after the poor reception of his most recent album, demonstrating that Kanye knows how to use Cudi better than Cudi knows how to use himself. Cudi sings the pre-hook on “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1,” bringing back flashes of his Man on the Moon-era, where he is at his most dominant.

TLOP is a winding, beautiful mess that demonstrates the consciousness of Kanye West perfectly. Some tracks feel disjointed and others too short. The album lacks an all-around theme and instead circulates many ideas to formulate one complete, layered piece of work. TLOP has so many layers that it will be months before anyone really knows what’s going on. Thus is the beauty of the mind of Kanye West. For all we know, he is tinkering with the album more and will release an alternate version. Stick around for the ride, because it’s a wild one.

-Station of the Year

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-Specialty Music Director Of The Year (Cody Roane)

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