Animal Collective
Orpheum Theater goes Psychotropic 10/16/13
by John Noyd
Posted: Oct 2013
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Animal Collective
Having to cancel at the last minute this past spring due to sickness, the four original members of Baltimore’s Animal Collective wiped any ill feelings away with a visually stimulating, sonically omnivorous hundred minute set October 16th at Madison’s Orpheum Theater. With most of the restlessly attentive audience crowded onto the floor for maximum exposure to the band’s unique brand of blissful mischief, the swampy stomps, tongue-tripping gymnastics and psychotropic light-show mesmerized the throbbing mob into a receptive collective. Employing a stage designed like a gaping mouth complete with projection screen teeth, and deploying a set list focused primarily on but not exclusive to Feels, Merriweather and Centipede, AC let the lights and sound pilot the ride. Hard-working, but relatively complacent ringmasters, the band spun a ten song set plus two song encore into a crazy carnival anointed in disjointed joy-rides of mercurial fury, crawling squalor and dazzling imagination for an absolutely transporting experience that was certainly worth the wait Filling the sizeable shoes left when the rescheduled show lost Dan Deacon as the opener, Dirty Projector’s Deradoorian’s slow hypnotic splendor stood in stark contrast to Animal Collective’s ricochet rock, methodically operating a dark electro-stalking gothic consumed in gloomy beauty.