Some songs are the essence of instant gratification, others need to be listened to multiple times, and some need a gestation period. I’ve given myself a few days with “Today’s Supernatural,” because I was confident that it was going to fall into the latter column.
The first official tease from the imminent Centipede Hz is a little tough to digest on the first couple listens. It’s a grower, a veritable smearing of colour, with sounds spraying all over the place and Avey Tare’s atom-splitting scream finding its way to the fore again. The lyrics alternate between pointed (“If you find something you believe in/You should do/Sometimes it won’t come so easy”) and hallucinatory (“There’s a ruby in your eye”), and end up covering nearly as much ground as the music. With the return of Deakin, Animal Collective is a foursome for the first time in five years, and it’s not hard to see what he has brought to the table. “Today’s Supernatural” is all over the place, and that’s a compliment. After the almost polished Merriweather Post Pavilion, this full-on freak out is exactly what we didn’t know we needed.
Centipede Hz is due out September 4th via Domino.
