Rosalie Knox.
Animal Collective is returning to live shows to honor their seminal 2005 album Feels.
The experimental indie band will play Queens’ Knockdown Center on October 22 and The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on October 24. Tickets will be available via artist and local pre-sale on Thursday, September 10 at 10 a.m. local time, and general on-sale will begin on Friday, September 11 at 10 a.m. local time. The forthcoming shows will be the first time the band has played together in four years.
The show announcement follows last year's 20th anniversary re-release of Feels which is available to stream and purchase. "When we celebrated the Feels 20th Anniversary edition last year, people often asked, ‘Why aren’t you performing it live?’" the band shared in a statement via a September 8 press release. "It was a good question, and honestly, one we just hadn’t asked ourselves. We were so used to our schedules not lining up that we didn’t consider it. But yeah, why didn’t we? The celebration felt incomplete to you all, and to us too."
The band goes on to explain the story behind their reunion: "‘We can relearn this album,’ we said. ‘We can find old loops, tunings, pedals, and a working minidisc player to grab old sounds. Then maybe if a small window of time opens up… Now it has, and we’re going to play the album in full (as well as some extras from the time) in NYC and LA this October. A 21st birthday party. We know only playing two shows in the two biggest cities in the states leaves a lot of you without an option to come out. We sincerely wish everyone who wants to see these shows could do so, and we’re sorry we can’t make that happen for you. As we said above, we only have a short window to get together right now. We’ll see how it goes and how the future shapes up down the road. For those who can come out, accept our deepest thanks, and we’ll see you down by the swimming pool.”
Feels came out amidst the Brooklyn-via-Baltimore's rise as indie rock's premier experimentalists. In a 2005 cover story for The FADER, the band chatted with writer Charles Homans about their eclectic sonic influences and the soon-to-be-released album. "There’s a pop song in every one of those tracks — it’s just embedded and surrounded by this blanket of fucked-up sounds,” Feels's producer Scott Colburn said of the album. Read the full story here.
