A couple weeks ago, I discussed the state of music videos in 2016 and featured a video for the song "FloriDada," by the band Animal Collective off of their new album, Painting With. Since then, the group has released the complete album, which is quite a detour from their various previous sonic adventures, so I felt it necessary to review this new addition to their comprehensive body of work.

A quick recap of Animal Collective and their legacy: This foursome – and now threesome – has been making music for going on 20 years and, in this time, has released nearly 20 records, if you include their EPs, live albums and feature-length film/video album, ODDSAC. Such a level of music production is astounding, and since it has been spread out over a series of decades, they have had plenty of time to experiment with a variety of sounds and styles. In an attempt to pin down their genre in my last article, I described them as "easiest to label as simply "experimental" (despite the fact depending on what era of their work you're listening to, it could be classified as pop, freak folk or alternative rock). Together, they founded their own record label on which they've been releasing their own music since day one as well as giving a voice to other artists, such as another favorite of mine, Ariel Pink.

After their most recent studio album, 2012's Centipede Hz, an album filled with lush, psychedelic ambience that at once plays up its instrumental capabilities alongside frequent sampling and use of white noise and plenty of brash vocals from Avey Tare (AKA David Portner), a vast change in sound was expected. Centipede Hz seemed to take Animal Collective's era of psych-sound-rock to its limits; it was messy, meandering – in a good way – and complex, written for and from the stage, which led to its sense of improv and big sounds. And let me tell you, having heard songs from this album performed live, it was incredibly well-suited for such a venue: bombastic, grooving and just genuinely entertaining and impressive to see crafted in front of your eyes, with both synths and instruments. It's even more apt that the only album released in between Centipede Hz and Painting With was, in fact, a live album (Live at 9:30, which I was lucky enough to get a special edition vinyl copy of, along with a poster from the show), taking their previous methodology to its complete end.And as my review of Painting With's "FloriDada" indicated, this new album looked like it would be far more bright, choppy and hyper, as indicated by the reference to painting and the experimental Dada art movement in the album and song titles.

This earlier prediction turned out to be quite accurate as the songs are short and upbeat across the entire album. This is likely a result of the lack of stage time any of these pieces got prior to recording, a parameter which Animal Collective purposefully placed upon themselves in its creation. While this process varies greatly from their previous works, that does not mean the sounds of some of their earlier music doesn't come through at times. The aforementioned "FloriDada," for example, has sounds reminiscent of their 2009 mega-experimental-pop-success Merriweather Post Pavillion, with the perfect blend of lush instrumentation alongside great synth beats and samples. The end of the track "Hocus Pocus" harkens back even earlier to the 2007 record Strawberry Jam, giving some fun synth usage that musically meanders a bit, just for the hell of it.

By the third track, the lack of guitar on the album (another parameter assigned to this work) becomes far more noticeable, as the songs become continually more beat-driven and bouncy. This is only enhanced by the sing-songy vocals that keep the whole thing generally feeling light and cheeky, and lyrics like "My feet won't cross the parking lot/The parking lot is too hot" on "Vertical" take this even a step further. Most of the album sounds like this, though, with a kids' video-game-like brightness mostly projected forward by strong beats and a vocal layering that sounds like each word is switched from one vocalist to another. From track five, "The Burglars," through the final track, "Recycling," this sound is highly consistent.

The only stylistic exceptions I felt worth noting were in "Lying in the Grass" and "Golden Gal." The former was notable in that it gave me some FKA Twigs vibes beat-wise, sounding slightly more sinister and unnerving than the rest of the tracklist. The latter, on the other hand, as the longest song on the album, has a sound that, to me, finds the sweet spot between earlier Animal Collective and the new sound they are diving into. There is a great use of sampling and the same synth-driven sound, but it feels more melodic and less sparse than some of the other tracks on the album.

All in all, this album is light and fun and definitely not bad. But, it is also not great, as it lacks some of the complexity most Animal Collective fans have come to expect from their avant-garde mainstays. Many of the songs blend together for me, aurally, and lack the oomph I want them to have. That said, I think the standouts on the album are "FloriDada," "Hocus Pocus," "Vertical" and "Golden Gal." They seem to be the most musically coherent on the album, not falling into one extreme or the other, and providing glimmers into what the whole album could have been: a stray away from some of what Animal Collective was and has been, but not what (at its core) it is.