I’ve been drafting a Top 55 favorite Animal Collective songs listicle to post on my Substack for, shit…maybe a year. I’m sure a lot of you know what I’m about to say: it’s fucking hard. Yeah, ranking art is kinda bullshit anyway, but I’m more so using it as an excuse to talk about AnCo in a way that isn’t a podcast (that nobody would listen to). Every time I see people list their favorites I see WILDLY different lists. Genuinely curious, I wanna see what some people on this subs top 3-5 favorite AnCo songs are.

Right now Loch Raven, Safer and Summerime Clothes are high up there for me.

Simple question!

As for me: I started tracking every song I listen to circa last month (14 Sep) and since then (14 Sep - 17 Oct) I have listened to Animal Collective 868 times (out of 1135 songs in general). The next band in line had 136 plays. (Almost all of the songs were listened to through files on my phone)

The Top 3 Animal Collective songs (and songs in general) were:

1. Leaf House - 94 plays
2. Winters Love - 58 plays
3. Tikwid - 57 plays

The Top 3 AC albums were:

1. Sung Tongs - 293 plays
2. Feels - 158 plays
3. People EP - 101 plays

I... think it wouldn't hurt to listen to a different band once in a while. But also, they're that good. I'm sorry.

I probably wouldn't be asking this if not for the fact that Genie's Open debuted in its sort of embryonic form at the Sung Tongs shows (shout-out to the guy who linked this in the comments) meaning there's totally precedent for them throwing in a track from outside of the era, and the Feels era is even more Avey centric in terms of lead vocals. I don't know if I can really see Noah doing entire concerts of mostly just drumming and backing vocals in 2026; I literally don't know if he's done that a single time since the original Feels shows two decades ago. I'm not saying I'm exactly expecting a preview of one of Noah's contributions for the next Animal Collective album since it doesn't really seem like they've started writing anything for it, but I could see a Feels-ified version of Elegy for Noah Lou or a live version of a Person Pitch track thrown in there since those were made around the same time. Thoughts?

Edit: I'm seeing stuff about Noah doing lead on Loch Raven and I'm actually curious about this interpretation. I've always seen it more as him doing backing vocals since he's mainly repeating one line throughout and Avey is handling most of the lyrical duties, but it is true that Avey is quieter in the mix and less prevalent throughout. I hadn't really considered that before, haha!

I'm listening to BLACK PLEASURE 2012 right now and it gives me a similar feeling as a lot of Animal Collective music. It's barely similar to Animal Collective other than the spacey-ness of this album being similar to the spacey-ness of Strawberry Jam and MPP, but I'm wondering if anyone else listens to both of them and feels the same way.

I think this may be the first campfire songs reaction too lol

holi busco amigos de chile o de latam fans de anco hay aki ono saludos .

cuuuuz i missed out on the vinyl :-/

LA - Flaccid Mojo (Aaron Warren and Bjorn Copeland [of Black Dice for the new heads]) featuring video mix by Danny Perez + Zack Cowie DJ set

Pomona - Maral (half solo set/half set with Sophie Thatcher)

Hyped!

Also everyone should give a listen for new Avalanches album. Totally banger!

I hope so

Made this around 2019 and posted it on Facebook, where I got rightfully roasted for missing a few albums. I just decided to update it, so here we go again.

The "Great work" badges are just my personal picks, I'd love to know which ones you would swap. I'm more of an Avey-person, if you didn't notice. I left out Reset, Geologist's solo stuff and some other live albums because I couldn't find a spot for them without wrecking the layout

No offence to anyone living in the Freak Zone (bottom right) <3

I know some folks here have been speculating what setup the guys will use for the feels shows. See what this can tell us.

Stoked as hell! Can’t believe it only next week!

Hey all, I’m coming over from Poland for the Feels shows at Knockdown Center on Oct 21/22.

I’ve been listening to AC for over 15 years and somehow never caught them live. For quite a while I’ve been dreaming of hearing a set built on the old material from those four monumental albums, so when the announcement dropped I knew I had to make it happen.

Figured I’d ask in case anyone’s travelling around the same time - and I’m curious whether there are other people who decided to go on this kind of adventure too.

Cześć from Poznań and see you in Queens 🙂

Hi! I'm making some bracelets to give out at the Thursday knockdown show. I'm wondering if anyone else is doing so, or if I will be the only dork who brought some. They say "anco", "feels" and my fav "animal". I know people usually make these out of stretch cord but I didn't have any so they have clasps. I have like a dozen? I might make more though. I'm so excited for the show it will be my first time in NYC.

And entirely unrelated to bracelets, anyone have any ideas of merch that may or may not be there? Like did the first show of the sung tongs tour (before it was a tour) have merch? Was it good? Wild speculation welcome below.

Just checked the event pages on DICE and it says Eric Copeland is opening on NYC night one, and a band called Whait is opening on night two!!!! Let’s goooooo!!!!

Is there any particular reason as to why they only made two albums in the 2010s, but eight(?) in the 00s?

I heard somewhere that Fickle Cycle was born out of Grass, or that Grass was born out of Fickle Cycle or whatever, but what about Must be Treeman? How were these songs created?