Gig played on 13/7/06

Given the current primacy of all things punky, funky and electro poppy, it's staggering to find that these four American, alias-favouring freaks are now very much more than a cult concern. Touts pace up and down outside while inside this sweltering venue, the balconies bulge to capacity with the committed - by no means serious, bearded blokes d'un age certain but rather a young and decidedly groovy crowd wound up and willing to be wowed. Animal Collective, it seems, have crossed over.

The experimental project formed in 2000 around vocalist / guitarist Avey Tare (né David Porter) and drummer Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) has carved a distinctive niche for itself in psychedelic pop, echoing few but inspiring many. Like Deerhoof and their chums Black Dice, Animal Collective (whose members have recorded solo and in various collaborative combinations under the same name) push that genre's definition to its farthest parameters, expressing a freedom that's positively atavistic.

Any concerns regarding their music being potentially "difficult" are blown away in the first three bars; Animal Collective make pop music with hooks - albeit hooks with irregular barbs fixed at the end of tangentially cast melodic lines. Theirs is a twisted folk which - despite an association with Vashti Bunyan - draws far more on drum circles, the Icelandic and Bulgarian choral traditions and Tibetan bone music - than it does say, Fairport Convention, while both the hallucinogenic adventurism of Syd Barrett and Eno's ambient episodes have also made their mark.

Sources aside, it looks like an enormous amount of fun up on stage and Animal Collective abandon themselves completely. Drummer Panda Bear adopts a tribal standing position behind his minimal kit throughout, while electronics maverick Geologist's front-of-stage spot underlines the band's interest in sonic textures over simple song structure. Guitarist Deaken (Joshua Dibb) bounds around as each song's mood determines, either harmonising sweetly with Tare or grunting over and over like some strange beast. Whether caught in the eye of his band mates' furious sonic storms or drifting languidly along with their solipsistic loops, Avey Tare's vocals are somehow both exotic and intimate; even a brief segue into "I Just Called To Say I Love You" sounds otherworldly tonight.

It's rapturous, exhilarating stuff, almost child-like in its sense of wonderment, alternating between passages of terrifying dynamism and tender delicacy, the sound one moment billowing out into space in wavering grooves, then erupting in fizzy ebullience or falling into a K-hole of dark noise and (controlled) confusion. It's psychedelic techno; it's wyrd folk; it's gonzo gospel for our godless age - Animal Collective are the keepers of a new kind of eccentricity. Dig the new breed.

by Sharon O'Connell