Animal Collective - Feels
Critic Score
Based on 22 reviews
2005 Ratings: #37 / 512
User Score
2005 Rank: #26
Liked by 219 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

91
SPIN
AC are all about the sometimes blissful, often uncanny intermingling of song and space.
90
Drowned in Sound
Animal Collective have made the album I hoped theyโ€™d make, and even that itโ€™s autumn and summerโ€™s over.
90
Sputnikmusic

Feels is weird if we put it up against such bizarre works like the neo-psych insanity of Here Comes the Indian and the cool, comfortable Campfire Songs, but when putting in perspective, it’s another evolution in the AnCo discography that was bound to happen sooner or later.

90
Tiny Mix Tapes

Feels is a psychedelic wonderland filled with life-affirming warmth.

90
Pitchfork

Like Animal Collective's previous full length, Feels is sequenced carefully, with jauntier, tuneful numbers leading to an amorphous back half.

86
Coke Machine Glow

Feels takes the Collective in an exciting new direction, creating the kind of record that expands on the group's less esoteric strengths while also pushing their sound forward.

80
NME
'Sung Tongs' brought a smattering of organization to the band's chaos, and now 'Feels' finally sees them emerge, blinking, into the sunlight.
80
Q Magazine
It's a very strange album indeed. Happily, it's also a very good one.
80
The Observer
What they've actually done is picked up the baton that Mercury Rev put down when they forsook the free jazz/psychedelic cusp for a steady living as purveyors of menopausal pomp-rock.
80
Prefix

Half of the album is rambunctious and full, driving and manic; the other half charms us with melancholic lullabies fueled by a single sip from the purple bottle. The result: With Feels, Animal Collective has created its first pop masterpiece.

80
NOW Magazine
It's one of those fascinating records for which each new listen reveals another unnoticed lyric, production element or instrumental track. In that sense, the album is both a gift and a curse.
80
Mojo
Every bit as chaotically charming as its predecessor.
80
Uncut

Feels depends on a balancing act between brilliance and whimsy, and some may need convincing that a purposely childlike band ... is not twee.

80
The Guardian
Swapping campfire cosiness for expansive joy, they sound so accomplished the Flaming Lips comparisons fall by the wayside.
80
No Ripcord

The great achievement of Feels is that it throws everything at every track yet never loses sight of the tunes themselves.

80
PopMatters

Feels is a highly rewarding journey into pop music's most primal, earthy, esoteric and ultimately beautiful places. And it's unlike anything else you will hear this year.

80
AllMusic
The group sounds freer than ever before, almost as though they've never bothered with rock in their lives, and have only happened upon a bare few LPs before beginning their recording career.
70
Under the Radar
Too much of the record seems content to be beautifully languid, but too flighty to really unsettle you.
60
Rolling Stone

A handful of cuts simply drift by unremarkably, but at its best, Feels gives hope to young bands who want to make beautiful noise but refuse to color within the lines.

40
Slant Magazine

Animal Collective's Feels fails to come together as a coherent whole.

Windy
89

๐—”๐—ป๐—ถ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐—–๐—ผ๐—น๐—น๐—ฒ๐—ฐ๐˜๐—ถ๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ'๐˜€ ๐——๐—ถ๐˜€๐—ฐ๐—ผ๐—ด๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—ฝ๐—ต๐˜†: ๐—™๐—ฒ๐—ฒ๐—น๐˜€

Feels is the second of what I see as the “big four” of AnCo’s discography; the four albums that would lead to them being seen as one of the 2000s greatest pop artists. It is also, strangely enough, the most overlooked of these four, at least in my experience. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sung Tongs and the albums following this one, but ... read more

grave
79

A psychedelic pop dreamscape.

Feels by Animal Collective is a fun and engaging psychedelic album that jumps around with character. And it does an amazing job bringing you into an atmosphere full of bright instrumentals and fun vocal melodies. With sometimes dipping their toes into a calmer and slower style that explodes with beauty.

Now with any psychedelic record, there's going to be a lot of reverb. And I feel like with Animal Collective records, they always go with a ton of it. And I do ... read more

BuffaloStaple
92

whole album's great but fuck me Banshee Beat all the way to the end is an absolutely remarkable stretch.

Cyn
97

Fuck man, that was a trip.

Feels is exactly what the title suggests. It's many emotions and feelings molded into an amalgam that's both cryptic and deeply moving. From beginning to end, it holds your attention with stylized instrumentals, atmospheric soundscapes and jarring vocal melodies. It blends into something that teeters on the line of 'uncanny as fuck" to "warm and jovial". While I think the whole album is pretty damn good, the back half is what elevates it for me. ... read more

Spamman
89

I didn’t love “Merriweather Post Pavilion”, but the confidence the band displayed made me curious about their other work.

“Feels” is definitely confident. The first song is filled with some very dense and difficult to desire poetry with lots of blood and organ metaphors.
I think it’s comparing violence to sex, but I honestly don’t know.
This first song, “Did You See The Words” is also dense sonically, packed to the brim with musical ideas. ... read more

CO6
82

This album would be 10 points higher if my mind wasn’t poisoned to think this sounds like AJR

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Track List

1Did You See the Words
5:15
95
2Grass
2:59
93
3Flesh Canoe
3:44
86
4The Purple Bottle
6:48
95
5Bees
5:38
89
6Banshee Beat
8:22
97
7Daffy Duck
7:34
90
8Loch Raven
4:59
92
9Turn into Something
6:29
94
Total Length: 51 minutes

Year End Lists

#3/No Ripcord
#7/Pitchfork
#36/SPIN
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