Wide Eyed

Album: Centipede Hz (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • This sprawling slice of electronic raga features all four members of the band in the same room, playing together at the same time. "We haven't done something so aggressive for some time, Noah "Panda Bear" Lennox told NME. "We were all crammed into a small room with the amps pointed at us. I was playing drums in the middle prompting people to crank it up. It definitely felt more like a unified expression rather than something that was pierced together from four individual characters."
  • Centipede Hz saw the return of Josh 'Deakin' Dibb to Animal Collective, after he sat out of the recording and touring of Merriweather Post Pavilion. This psychedelic tune finds him dispensing cryptic observations as he reflects on both the difficulties of living and his attempts at getting past them. "Though I'm overwhelmed at times. I find I'm less afraid of change," he sings. It marks the first Animal Collective song where Deakin sings lead vocals.
  • Deakin admitted to eMusic that it "felt challenging" being the principal songwriter on an Animal Collective cut. "These guys were really psyched about it," he said. "When I brought it up to them, they were like, 'Do it.' I was already working on the song. It was one of the first songs we actually worked on, and they were all psyched on it, so I felt really easy and safe just to try it. It's definitely a new thing, in a good way. I'd always experienced, like, Dave having a song and Noah having a song. It was interesting to be the one who wrote the song, and have someone like Dave being like, 'I think this sounds really good,' and me being like, 'I know, but it's not quite right.' It's a good perspective."

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