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Centipede HZ

Animal Collective

Centipede HZ

The influential experimental psychedelic band follow up the hugely-acclaimed Merriweather Post Pavilion with their 9th studio album, featuring the return of guitarist Deakin

ADM rating[?]

7.5

Label
Domino
UK Release date
03/09/2012
US Release date
04/09/2012
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  1. 9.1 |   Beats Per Minute

    Guitars and bleepy sounds chirp and swirl while Avey sings about stories, fantasies, and imagination
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  2. 9.1 |   Pretty Much Amazing

    Centipede Hz was bound to dissatisfy. After you’re done qualifying Centipede Hz, you’re still left with a terrific, jubilant, life-affirming album. In other words, an Animal Collective album. Most bands would kill to disappoint this well
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  3. 9.0 |   Sputnik Music (staff)

    Animal Collective feels like an art tribe, widening in its scope and loosening band
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  4. 9.0 |   God Is In The TV

    On Centipede Hz they have actually hitched right round the galaxy of further sonic exploration and taken us with them on one absolutely glorious interstellar ride
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  5. 9.0 |   The Line Of Best Fit

    It might take some time for many to consider it their favourite Animal Collective album. But that day will arrive, and those who come to love it will do so as passionately as they have any of their previous works
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  6. 9.0 |   Clash

    Inspired by how an extraterrestrial band could sound in a bar on another planet, they’ve created something that’s out of this world
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  7. 8.5 |   BBC

    Submit fully to Centipede Hz and it will infect you, quite deliciously, for the foreseeable
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  8. 8.5 |   Under The Radar

    A magical album that takes the listener on a wondrous journey into a party where love is found, lost, and ultimately sublimated into an unsurpassable catharsis
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  9. 8.0 |   Mojo

    Another delirious and ecstatic step forward. Print edition only

  10. 8.0 |   Spin

    This one is more private, concerned with the effect music makes on the individual, embedding its lyrics deeper into the mix, rewarding the type of close listening you only can do alone
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  11. 8.0 |   Tone Deaf

    The constantly astonishing thing is that they Animal Collective can still create sing-a-long moments, they may be few and far between, but for music that can be confronting it makes it that bit more accessible
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  12. 8.0 |   DIY

    No other band around would be capable of creating such experimental, psychedelic, mad, and oddly, very listenable pop music
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  13. 8.0 |   No Ripcord

    Centipede Hz could have been something truly special, but as it stands, it’s a portrait of growing up that is wonderfully vivid but a tad unfulfilling
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  14. 8.0 |   PopMatters

    All in all, Centipede Hz is an album that’ll get a hold on you as all its arms grab on and don’t let go
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  15. 8.0 |   Q

    Given time, its melodies begin to seep out, revealing themselves to be ornate and pretty and maddeningly catchy. Print edition only

  16. 8.0 |   The Irish Times

    Sonically complex and a creative leap forward, this is a big, bruiser of an album – and one of the best you’ll hear all year
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  17. 8.0 |   NME

    It will frustrate as much as it delights. And no, not everything they through at the wall sticks. By my, what a lovely mess they've made
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  18. 8.0 |   Consequence Of Sound

    Explores its own labyrinthine interior rather than take advantage of the intense anticipation generated by Merriweather’s newly massive, crossover footprint
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  19. 8.0 |   Evening Standard

    Their most cohesive work to date
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  20. 8.0 |   Independent on Sunday

    Simultaneously the most and the least pop record of the autumn
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  21. 7.5 |   Bowlegs

    Few bands sound so simultaneously complex yet direct, like a tangled ball of thread you learned to live with instead of were irritated by
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  22. 7.4 |   Pitchfork

    A cluttered, abrasive album that confirms their naysayers' exaggerated perceptions of the band. But even a patchy Animal Collective album yields several exceptional songs
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  23. 7.0 |   Rolling Stone

    A touch more earthbound than we've come to expect from them – a return to what the band calls its garage-rock "roots"
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  24. 7.0 |   Uncut

    Unlikely to elicit the broad appeal that was granted Merriweather. Centepede Hz is an album that both gazes up into the cosmos, and stares down into the dirt
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  25. 7.0 |   Drowned In Sound

    It’s jolly and kinetic and greater than the sum of its songs
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  26. 6.0 |   The Observer

    Probably brings AnCo another molecule's width closer to the mainstream; retaining all the dislocation and unevenness that their fans treasure but remapping it on to more recognisable instruments
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  27. 6.0 |   The Skinny

    While far from a failure, Centipede Hz still feels awfully like a diluted facsimile of its two predecessors. We’ve come to expect more from the real thing
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  28. 6.0 |   Paste Magazine

    Centipede Hz will prove a litmus test for the bubble of new fans welcomed into the fold
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  29. 6.0 |   The Guardian

    The crossover path between experimental voyagers and indie-rock darlings is well trodden, and from Spiritualized to Mercury Rev it's studded with groups opting to refine their sound, not quest for a new one. It's to Animal Collective's credit that they haven't taken this option. Centipede Hz sets them up well for the future, without always managing to satisfy in the present
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  30. 6.0 |   hhv.de mag

    The soundscapes of former days are now just slippery surfaces – but this time, no one’s gonna catch you. And that might just be the record’s biggest disappointment
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  31. 5.8 |   A.V. Club

    It’s like a manic transmission that’s only being half picked up, leaving the receiver the task of attempting to reconstruct the message from incomplete information
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  32. 5.5 |   Prefix

    Falls short of being the album it could be
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  33. 5.0 |   musicOMH

    For large parts of this record, perhaps for the first time since the group’s inception, Animal Collective sounds like a band doing little more than going through the motions
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  34. 5.0 |   Slant Magazine

    Centipede Hz may have a lot of interesting elements floating around, and it may be held together by the same strong songcraft that has always sustained Animal Collective, but it's all too murky and familiar, less profoundly complex than inaccessibly complicated
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