Animal Collective | Bowery Ballroom

Animal Collective

Though they've been around for years, the buzz surrounding this amorphous Baltimore group has grown deafening: their recorded sound can be compared to fellow avant-guardists from Radiohead to the Flaming Lips to John Cage, while in concert, their old songs are re-invigorated with improvised segments and updated rhythms, making them one part Pitchfork, one part Relix and all parts cult cool. If you can get past their weird-for-weird's-sake arrangements—and it's not always easy to do that. AC's new album "Merriweather Post Pavilion" emerges as a worth-it challenge, filled with collages of sound and exhortations of uncommon melody that serve simultaneously as joyously celebratory and dronily disarming. With Drawlings.