Tangerine Reef is a project that may likely polarize Animal Collective fans, and it may not be an ideal jumping-off point for anyone looking to discover this unique band, but it's a worthy addition to their catalog, and it supports a supremely important cause in this day and age.
Like any visual album, the floating sounds here are probably best experienced in conjunction with the visuals they were created for, but even on their own, there's a calm power that grows as the various passages of Tangerine Reef fade in and out of one another.
With Tangerine Reef, Animal Collective’s second audiovisual album, the band leans deep into its nautical tendencies, crafting a surreal soundtrack for “avant-garde coral macro-videography” (read: underwater footage of coral reefs).
For fans of Animal Collective's trippier inclinations, Tangerine Reef is a pleasant bit of oceanic escapism. For new listeners or anyone looking for the next "My Girls," this is decidedly inessential.
I have no doubt that Tangerine Reef will be a remarkable experience when paired with its visual stimuli, but without it, it is an album hard to recommend.
Tangerine Reef has its moments, but it veers in and out of being truly engaging all on its own.
While Tangerine Reef inspires as a pseudo-political statement regarding the deteriorating environment at the hands of mankind, Animal Collective ultimately disappoints with this record—it’s yet another forgettable checkpoint within the band’s recent run.
Too much of Tangerine Reef feels like ambient murk in service of nothing.
The worst way to engage with Tangerine Reef is by listening to it.
In search, perhaps, of something more profound than the Beach Boys-haunted lo-fi surrealism of early albums, or the fizzing avant-garde electropop that became their calling card after 2009 breakthough album Merriweather Post Pavilion, AC plumb depths of paucity more than subtlety in this wilfully desolate expanse of dispassionate vocals and vague, awkward ambience.
Tangerine Reef is more like the sound of pretending to experience something profound.