Sustaining a relationship with Animal Collective is a demanding undertaking. After listening to Feels a couple dozen times, I think I have a little bit of a notion as to what it must be like to be the parents of manic-depressive child. You never know from one minute to the next if they're going to be droning or yelping incomprehensively, or having a lucid conversation with you about the difficulties they're having arranging all their toys in such a way as to allow them to all fit neatly into their toy box. "Come take a look at this for me, will ya Dad, maybe someone with your experience with spatial logistics might be able to lend me a hand.." Then as you ascend the stairs with your normal sounding son he starts to speak in tongues punctuated with an amazing array of onomatopoeia and siren's calls - and by the time you've arrive at his room, he doesn't know a toybox from a timebomb.

The tracks on Feels are sequenced in such a way as to really represent a significant head-fake. Each of the first four tracks, though certainly still quirky around the edges are put together in such a way as to not be a substantial strain on the dictionary definition of the word "song." Not only are there definable song parts (verses, choruses, bridges etc.) but they're really good and even flirt with the concept of traditional song structure. Track one "Did You See The Words?" slams you into one of the most "stick in your head" choruses of the year - terribly reminiscent of Augie March, with plenty of overlapping female backing vocals that drip like nectar from these seductive hooks. Certainly a worthy candidate for the best song of the year. Brian Wilson's influence is tatooed all over this four song prelude, as are lesser nods to John Lennon. But you couldn't pay me enough to deny that Animal Collective have been taking heavy doses of Augie March's Strange Bird intravenously. In any case all this flirting with actual songs might rightfully lead one to suspect that perhaps the entire album is going to be comprised of these . . . what did I call them again? Songs? Alas tracks 5 and 6 "Bees" and "Banshee Beat" are like being plunked right back in the middle of Sung Tongs. And until the closing track "Turn Into Something," which is a partial reprisal of the album's first four tracks, Feels remains in the surreal world of traditional Animal Collectivism..

Am I complaining about this? It's hard to say - I liked Sung Tongs and gave it a 4 out of 5 rating - still after getting this tease of a taste as to what this band would sound like, were they to take the plunge into recognizable song structure I find myself incredibly torn. "Feels" very much lays it out for fans in vivid black and white. The first half they experiment (if you will) with songs that are tuneful, even poppy forays into conventional music making, and the second half, with minor exceptions finds them returning with a vengeance to their trademark amorphous stylings that I described in my Sung Tongs review as a John Lennon, Yoko Ono album played backwards by aliens whose spaceship is poorly equipped to decode Earthling recordings.

I happen to be a fan of both black and white, but if I were playing God just for a moment, I would like to see this band make an album entirely made up of the type of stuff they proved themselves proficient at on these first four songs, rather than mixing their two distinct personalities on the same record. You have to be in a certain mindset to appreciate AC's standard fare, and having them bouncing in and out of that mantra doesn't work for me.

For those unfamiliar with Animal Collective, who might've purchased Feels based upon having seen the album high on someone's best-of list, are likely to be a bit disconcerted by the albums devolution into AC's repetitive strumming of some unidentifiable stringed instrument, the chirping of birds and tree sprites and the strange, almost spoken vocals, that sound like some kind of cosmic poetry that John or George might have jotted down during an acid trip while visiting the Maharishi. The trick then is to listen to the album enough times to reconcile both halves into one glorious offering. There's no reason not to love this record. None at all.