The Ring |

Experimental indie staple Animal Collective premiered their new album ODDSAC at Sundance Festival this past summer. Yes – Sundance. It’s a visual album directed by Danny Perez. I saw it at a screening in Chicago a few weeks ago. I suggest you get your hands on it – especially if you liked that creepy-ass VHS from The Ring.

I’m not necessarily suggesting that this film is good, but rather just completely expected. Films of this caliber seem completely immune to genuine criticism. Instead, it’s more appropriate to simply say that this album/film was visually and audibly accurate. If it weren’t for the fact that Animal Collective wrote the film’s musical score, or what seems more like hyperbolic folly with traces of music, I wouldn’t even mention the sound at all.

With a film this experimental and visual, this audio track seemed to be par for the course. You know what I mean – when people walk through the forest, the noise that their feet make as they walk over dry leaves sounds much more like the sound of someone crushing elephant bones, not someone walking through a forest of dry leaves. Conveniently, Animal Collective’s music already sounds a little like someone crushing elephant bones.

Having said that, no matter how atrocious the music or film was or could have been, it’s refreshing – and hopefully an indication of what lies ahead for the music industry. As years go by, I find myself continually bitching about how the future that I had anticipated never seems to actually be happening. However, as I was sitting in the Chicago screening of ODDSAC, I was reminded that flying cars aren’t the only sign of the world slowly becoming a Philip K. Dick novel.

Animal Collective and Danny Perez took liberties with an increasingly tired industry (music albums), and made a beautiful project that should be appreciated as true art. I’m looking forward to more of these “visual albums” (specifically if Atom and His Package starts making music again).