Animal Collective - Feels

Outsider music's crossover cover boys take a giant step towards mainstream accessibility with this album--then jump right over it into the bushes. Having garnered the highest freak honors with their previous album, Sung Tongs, here they expand from two to four members and take their chirpy call-and-response harmonies to a whole other level, adding a cohesive production that welds all the disparate elements into genuine melodic hooks. The opening track, "Did You See the Words," even has a distinct indie-rock chorus (for a while anyway) in addition to the scattered ivory tinkling and Panda Bear's upper-octave-strained ravings. Not long afterwards they're layering on the war whoops and Beach Boy vocalizing until it all starts rising and falling like the sea, often alongside contrapuntal piano and more robust and full-bodied drum work than previous AC albums. Somehow or other their signature primitivism coalesces into near pop perfection and seldom falters anywhere along its breakneck 52-minute run.