My new dream show: Animal Collective at a big campfire in the woods. Somehow we’d get a power source out there to deal with the myriad of wires and electronics somehow necessary to manipulate the vocals and create the strange background noises that accentuate the eccentricity of their sound. Avey Tare would close his eyes and sing in the glean of the flames, Deakin would sit cross-legged on a log and sway back and forth, and when the tempo sped up the band would all rise together and dance around the fire to their tribal grooves, drums beating and arms swaying. The mesmerized audience would soon join them, and a spiritual experience would be shared by all.

Even though the Empty Bottle is a far cry from a campground, the Animal Collective still recreated a similar experience for their doting fans. Personally, I’m relatively new to the Animal Collective phenomenon. I liked Sung Tongs enough to place it on my top 20 albums of 2004; however, I still found myself drawn to the more accessible, “poppier” tracks on the album, like “Leaf House” and “We Tigers.” Well, Animal Collective didn’t play any of those songs on this night; in fact, they hardly played anything from Sung Tongs at all. Yet even without having that sense of familiarity that is often necessary at a good show, I found myself completely stunned by everything that came from that stage during their (far too short) one-hour set. Permeating every song, whether a delicate, earthy ballad or a flailing, high-speed freak-out, was the sense that every member of the band really felt the music they were playing, and that every sound they made was meaningful and vitally important to whatever mood they were trying to create at any given moment. It was really a joy to see.

Opening for Animal Collective was label-mate Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. Ariel Pink is a tiny, tiny man. Wandering the stage with only a microphone as three (much taller) band members handled keyboards, bass, sound effects, and back-up vocals duties, his brand of three-minute pop songs buried underneath a sea of synth and noise was interesting, if not forgettable. Never during the set did he play anything as accessible as “Kate I Wait” or “Jules Lost His Jewels,” and I think if he’d mixed more traditional songs such as those amongst the unintelligible noise, it would have made for a more engaging show. Instead, the band seemed extremely detached from the audience and their purpose on stage- with absolutely no eye contact with the audience or even modest stage banter to connect us to them in any way, it was almost as if we were watching a band practice in its basement. Pink paced rhythmically back and forth (two steps forward, two steps back) for the entirety of the performance, hunched over and spastically waving his free hand in the air, reminding me of the schizophrenic man I sometimes see wandering around my subway car talking very, very intensely to himself.

Whatever it was I needed to truly “click” with the Animal Collective, I found it at the Empty Bottle during one of the best shows I’ve seen all year. After the music ended I marched right on over to the merch table to buy Here Comes the Indian and listened to it on the car ride home, where the album’s more experimental leanings were suddenly amazing music to my ears. Upon arriving at home, I downloaded Young Prayer to bask once again in Panda Bear’s tender, beautiful voice. One hour was not enough with this band, and I look forward to another chance to spend some time with one of the most innovative and fascinating bands to come around in a long time.