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Painting With

Animal Collective

Painting With

Album number ten from the experimental psychedelic band this time working as a trio and recorded in the same studio as The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds

ADM rating[?]

6.7

Label
Domino
UK Release date
19/02/2016
US Release date
19/02/2016
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  1. 9.5 |   The 405

    This is a lush, intellectual and brilliant collection, constantly teeming with sounds, innovations and ideas
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  2. 8.8 |   Earbuddy

    It clocks in at a lean 41 minutes with no second wasted
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  3. 8.3 |   Pretty Much Amazing

    Where it lacks wild-eyed adventurousness, it compensates with clarity and focus. Offerings of pure pop pleasure are offset with healthy doses of weirdness. It’s a sincere, exciting and excitable album that successfully adds by subtracting
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  4. 8.0 |   Slant Magazine

    For both its earnest, uninhibited sense of play and impeccable pop, Painting With is a uniquely affecting album
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  5. 8.0 |   Spin

    It’s poppier, in a characteristically warped way, than even Merriweather, the group’s most popular album to date
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  6. 8.0 |   The Skinny

    It's the sound of a band refreshed
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  7. 8.0 |   Uncut

    Like true postmodernists, Animal Collective are making it up as they go along, and they're never boring
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  8. 8.0 |   The List

    It may have been 15 years, but the band continue to demonstrate their creativity and thirst for adventure with every release
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  9. 8.0 |   Loud And Quiet

    If ‘Painting With’ isn’t a leap into the unknown, it is certainly a confident step forward
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  10. 8.0 |   NOW

    Although the album revels in its sonic clutter, there are tracks scattered throughout to catch your breath
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  11. 8.0 |   All Music

    Undeniably great sounding, the record puts Animal Collective's brightest colors forward and, if history is any indication, is no predictor whatsoever of what they may do next
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  12. 8.0 |   Evening Standard

    Their previous group effort, Centipede Hz from 2012, was heavy and confusing. This time they promise “No B.S, get in, get out material” and it’s a delight
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  13. 8.0 |   DIY

    An album about doing away with boundaries, escaping definition, and running riot
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  14. 8.0 |   Gig Soup

    Its frenzied nature prevents ‘Painting With’ from being hung alongside their best work, but it remains a colourful and energetic addition to their discography nonetheless
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  15. 7.5 |   Beardfood

    The hyperactive psychedelica and hypnotizing chants can blow your mind
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  16. 7.5 |   A.V. Club

    Animal Collective is capable of crafting self-serious, masterful records; Painting With shows that the group is perhaps even better at making something meaningful when it loosens up
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  17. 7.5 |   Consequence Of Sound

    Throughout the album, Avey Tare and Panda Bear wrap their voices together into a call-and-response interplay. While this effect may initially disorient listeners, it becomes meditative and natural
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  18. 7.5 |   The Line Of Best Fit

    In a world where you can see the colour of gravitational waves an album like this is not out of place – it’s a work of great weight and a masterpiece of colour
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  19. 7.0 |   Spectrum Culture

    Animal Collective has succeeded in both making a mind-bending, wacky trip of a record
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  20. 7.0 |   Rolling Stone

    Animal Collective strip away the reverb, hit the accelerator on a delightfully absurd LP
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  21. 6.2 |   Pitchfork

    Painting With was the first time the band jumped right into the studio. Work can be scheduled, magic can't
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  22. 6.0 |   PopMatters

    Painting With is unmistakably an Animal Collective album, but in its eager familiarity, it ultimately neglects the one all-important quality of any Animal Collective record: novelty
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  23. 6.0 |   The Music

    While the kaleidoscopic haze of Vertical echoes some of their career highs, Painting With rarely matches their dizzying, optimistic triumphs such as Merriweather Post Pavilion
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  24. 6.0 |   Q

    Devotees will likely be delighted. Print edition only

  25. 6.0 |   Mojo

    For all their organic methods, these Animals often come across as robotic and constricted. Print edition only

  26. 6.0 |   The Guardian

    The devotees will doubtless be more devoted than ever after listening to it, objectors can still find plenty of reason to object, and perhaps that’s what the band want
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  27. 6.0 |   The Observer

    It’s not quite Taylor Swift, but Painting With, AnCo’s 10th, seeks to distil everything the band do into sugar-rush form
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  28. 6.0 |   musicOMH

    They’ve made an authentically psychotropic, kaleidoscopic trip of a record: brace yourself and beware the come-down
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  29. 6.0 |   Tiny Mix Tapes

    The songs here offer glimpses of hope that there is plenty of magic and power left in these humans, that the future holds another singular release from their camp
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  30. 6.0 |   The Arts Desk

    There’s plenty of colour in these art-themed pieces, but any self-respecting Dadaist would demand much more disruption to the slightly samey mood
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  31. 6.0 |   Exclaim

    They've lost the collaborative, intersectional sound that's always provided a sense of humanity heart at the centre of Animal Collective
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  32. 6.0 |   The Irish Times

    Structured, short, direct yet tainted with a nagging sense of incompletion
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  33. 6.0 |   The FT

    It’s a tiring kind of fun
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  34. 6.0 |   God Is In The TV

    The overlapping hopping vocals remain. So do the jumpy compositions that grow in suffocating layers
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  35. 6.0 |   Resident Advisor

    For sure, Animal Collective still have plenty of whimsical creativity left in them, but on Painting With they mostly color inside the lines
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  36. 6.0 |   Clash

    A record that has moments of brilliance but by virtue of trying to be a novelty record, actually comes closer to being a rehash of their previous work
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  37. 6.0 |   No Ripcord

    All in all, Painting With feels just far too interpolated, and even familiar, to truly grasp, though through its failures it manages to somehow bring them one step closer to achieving those awe-inspiring moments of yore
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  38. 6.0 |   State

    Long term fans may be able to pick up nuances due to a change in production, but for the rest this is an album on which you’ll already made your mind up
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  39. 5.0 |   Drowned In Sound

    Feels like a band boffinishly determined to experiment with making iterations on one sort of song, because that's the thing that interested them the most at the time
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  40. 5.0 |   Crack

    Doubling up on everything that’s divisive about their music, Painting With discards the spacious arrangements and restraint of previous album Centipede Hz in favour of lightning-paced chaos
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  41. 3.0 |   Under The Radar

    Painting With is by a distance the most annoying album you'll hear this year, and not just because it sounds exactly how those people imagine the band always has
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  42. 3.0 |   The Quietus

    By their nature experiments often fail - and this nightmare of airless forced fun emphasises the point in garish capital letters
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  43. Back to main chart

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