Verbs

You cannot not listen to that song without being happy. The rest of the album is stunning too, and I cannot stop listening to it.

It is warm outside of a non-air-conditioned dorm room on the Carnegie Mellon campus. To escape the oppressive August heat we flee downstairs to the cozy mahogany lounge ultimately reclining on couches and listening to the musical guest play. To be fair, it is only a dorm café, but their usual environment is much like that of any college lounge: glaringly cheerful, hypocritically alternative, and making a frightful attempt to appease the populace with very pop-y sounds. This is the environment where I first heard AU perform and where I bought this album. Verbs is AU's second attempt at a heterophonic masterpiece and is very close to a success. "All My Friends" presents the slowly advancing army of a twenty voice choir each carrying their own inflections and interpretations on the omnipresent melody to open for the festival of "Are Animals". The softer sounds of "Summerheat" blend seamlessly out of and into dance. The album, overall, presents a brilliant combination of vocal and synth backgrounds giving out to melodies that can be held for the space of a bar or an entire song, much like Animal Collective, its associated solo projects (Avey Tare, Panda Bear, etc.), or Grizzly Bear. It takes on a somewhat more structured character during "Are Animals", "The Waltz", and "rr Vs. D", which, while very much like "Take Pills" or the rare glimpses of coherency in any Animal Collective album, is ultimately more like "Akron/Family" than anything else. The album is a must have for any modern psychedelic collection, but could just as easily compliment a post-shoegaze album. The presentation and order is dynamic and well-formed leaving very little to criticize. Truly, this album is a refreshing glimpse into the potential new directions of psych.

Animal Collective has been one of my all time favorite bands for a while now. My dad is a religious listener of NPR and introduced me to a podcast of this band called Au. Well...i was sold!!!

I first herd of them on the "PDX Pop Now!" CD, and fell in love with there odd yet plesent sound. They are wonderfully amazing!

sort of like animal collective meets something even better...i dont know how to describe it at the moment but its wonderful

I don't often get excited about new music, especially when its compared to artists I don't like (Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear). Au's "Verbs" however, has sold me! What most critics pick up on is its intense influence by composers like Terry Riley and John Cage. To purely place it in a modern indie sphere is condensing the album and not allowing the whole sonic spectrum to come to light.

A sound at once mystical and enigmatic, warm and familiar, and truly truly sublime.

Interesting, but Genre: Rock?????? Come on itunes