Hallock Hill

Animal Collective, “Brother Sport,” Merriweather Post Pavillion (Domino 2009)

Animal Collective is the “family values” band of the moment. “My Girls,” arguably the best song of the last few years, celebrates family and love in a way that few songs ever have, revolving around the core idea of “care.” Their’s is a philosophical bent, not political, at heart, and it isn’t hippie idealism either, but an acceptance of the reality of the present world and one’s need to carve out private space within it. Jack Kubizne’s video for “Brother Sport” outdoes Spike Jonzes’s “Where the Wild Things Are” by a clear mile in a mere fraction of the time. Celebrating childhood without veering into muddy, saccharine mush is not easy. And a blind canvas of pure psychedelia only makes a different kind of mud. Being “cool” for cool’s sake always loses points. Kubzine takes Animal Collective’s glorious song and energizes it with visions of the imaginative cycles of childhood, those that spill from the present to past, “real” to “unreal” (such as in the animated worlds that inspired us and made us laugh), from “poor” to “rich.” Which really translates in this world to “enriched” — the fuller state of being. Animal Collective take a relatively simple, finite amount of electronic gear and connect their inputs to the infinite soundscapes of the world. Sometimes only a snippet gets through. Sometimes a longer passage. But whatever gets in passes through their singular filter, and celebrates possibility, which at its best is what care is really all about.