Sorry Animal Collective, but we have a new album of the year. I've been waiting for Veckatimest in a ravenous way, eating up any bit of info, any live version of a new song, constantly checking torrent sites to see if it's leaking, etc, just like I did with Animal Collectives Merriweather Post Pavillion. But when they day came when Veckatimest did leak, I couldn't tear myself away from it for anything. A few days past that, I still can't. It's simply the most mesmerizingly beautiful album I've ever heard.
The album versions of the two songs that have been floating around the internet for about a year now- "Two Weeks" and "While You Wait For Others"- sound amazing in their studio incarnations, yet my surprise is that they're not the best the album has to offer. The gem of the album is "I Live With You" which features Beach House singer Victoria Legrand, singing backup to Daniel Rossen. The song starts off in a swell of stings evoking an old school romance in the golden age of cinema, before Danny and Victoria make the mood ethereal with their angelic voices and the rest of the band explodes into cacophony. Sandwiched between "While You Wait For Others" and album closer "Foreground," Veckatimest has possibly the best three song conclusion ever.
Other stand out tracks took a listen or two to register. "Cheerleader" and "Dory" are both amazing as well. "Cheerleader" has an amazing lead vocal by Ed Droste in which the verse contains the hook, and then Victoria Legrand and the rest of the band comes in to make the song almost levitate in the chorus as the solid bassline and reverbed guitar create a prickly backdrop that soars when called upon. "Dory" is a Danny track that is more a vocal workout in the beginnign until about halfway when Droste comes in and the song becomes something else I have no words for. Just suffice to say it's magestic.
The entire album is good from start to finish, with a perfect opener in "Southern Point" and a great closer in "Foreground." It's almost an objective reality to call it better than 2006's Yellow House, which i love as well, but this is a different animal entirely. It might break out to a little mainstream success, and it might not but more people are definitely going to take notice of this band now.
I got the leaked copy but I am definitely gonna buy the album the day it comes out (May 26th) and you should do the same. They earned it.
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All We Ask is so terribly under-appreciated! If you let that song take control, God will peek out and say "Howzit?"
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