Songfacts®:

• "Defeat" is a 22-minute epic released as part of by Animal Collective's Isn't It Now album. The song unfolds gradually, starting with a melancholic mood and building to a more uplifting and hopeful climax. It includes several distinct sections, creating a sense of emotional progression.
• Animal Collective's Avey Tare, Noah Lennox, and Josh Dibb share vocal duties. They explore themes of loss, decay, and the struggle for strength and stability in the face of adversity. The three singers grapple with feelings of despair and uncertainty when the land seems to shift beneath them. Lines like "What have we become?" and "The only thing to hold, stay grounded like the spruce" reflect this struggle and the search for stability. In moments of overwhelming or insufficient experiences in life, they find themselves crying out, questioning whether it is the time to surrender to defeat.
• The song includes guest appearances from musicians Samara Lubelski (violin), Leila Bordreuil (cello), and Ben Chapoteau-Katz (saxophone).
• "Defeat" is the centerpiece of Animal Collective's 12th studio album, Isn't It Now? The record is less sonically overloaded than other Animal Collective albums, with three-part harmonies driving most of the melodies.
  
  "A lot of the songs I wrote were influenced by Early Music and Gregorian vocal pieces - that's why the harmonic element is so large in them," Avey Tare told Uncut magazine.
  
  These songs include "Defeat."
  
  "No matter how many times we've played it, it's remained emotional for us," said Tare. "It seemed to become a fan favorite after we first played it at the (New Orleans) Music Box in 2018 and that also makes us excited to record a song. It's a good example of us becoming one unified sound, and we move as that sound like the ocean through the song."
• Isn't It Now? was born alongside the songs for their 2022 album Time Skiffs during a summer songwriting retreat in Leiper's Fork, Tennessee. Looking to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic's limitations, Animal Collective prioritized tracks suitable for remote recording for Time Skiffs. This left Isn't It Now? with material that thrived on live energy and improvisation, shaping its distinct sonic identity.
• Animal Collective recorded Isn't It Now? over the course of 12 days in late 2021 at the Bunker in Brooklyn with producer Russell Elevado. "We all just love the D'Angelo records he worked on," Tare told Uncut. "There is a fat, warm liveliness. We thought Russell could really enhance the rhythm section we were trying to provide, along with helping us achieve a really sweet, live-in-the-room sound."