Animal Collective - Live In Manchester
[Manchester Academy 3]

Animal Collective translates better into a live performance than I could ever have hoped for.

A collection of tracks from the much loved Sung Tongs and 2005's Feels are regurgitated with a new slant, often a static soundclash of noise and foreign samples, where method is exchanged for madness, a sort of letting loose of any structure the track once possessed.

Somewhere underneath all the anarchy, fragments of formula, of a methodology, can be detected, as the sound manages to be tight and together but remains unpredictable and volatile.

Animal collective possess an unclassifiable and distinctive sound, which is certainly a rather sweeping statement to be making. They never fail to sound like the shredded remains of a tape reel containing a perfect 60's pop song that's been sellotaped back together and played at full volume with the levels all wrong.

Grass, perhaps the best example of this, goes down a treat with the crowd, the live version corrupted with chronic distortions and copious layers of electronic noise, raising its ugly-beautiful head from the depths of Geologists's erratic twiddling and Panda Bears' primordial drumming.

Support is provided by Kria Brekken, formerly known as the Doctress. She is a doughy eyed, baby voiced new folk purveyor of impossibly fragile tracks, where she potters around on a small collection of acoustic instruments accompanied by vocals that sound like the squeaky one from CocoRosie and Joanna Newsom. All is very pleasant but she complains a little too much about the people talking at the bar.

An encore of We Tigers is the perfect finale, erupting in a flurry of screeches and feedback, making infinitely creative use of vocals that are used more like an instrument to experiment with than anything else.

Red lights flood the stage and the crowd is transported into the magical world of Animal Collective for a few brief minutes, in the midst of coiled snake-like melodies and raw prehistoric beats, with debasing static contortions, before reluctantly having to reconnect with reality all too quickly.