Over the past two decades, Animal Collective and its members have produced at least half a dozen albums widely hailed as masterpieces. But what makes AnCo feel so much like a Great Band isn’t just those records—it’s the array of one-offs, collaborations, soundtracks, and idle experiments released between the classics. Every release isn’t guaranteed to blow your mind, or even be especially listenable (take, for example, Avey Tare’s entirely-backwards collaboration with Kría Brekkan or the ear-piercing buzz of Danse Manatee, which might sound unfriendly at first). Instead, Animal Collective’s appeal lies in how they’ve staked out an oasis of aspirational strangeness where anything can happen, and the usual expectations for a critically acclaimed indie rock band need not apply.
In that context, consider A Shaw Deal, an album Animal Collective’s Geologist made with his friend Doug Shaw of Highlife. Its runtime is less than half an hour, and Geologist, aka Brian Weitz, made it as a gift for Shaw’s birthday; still, given its place within the larger AnCo constellation, perhaps it’s not especially odd that the album got a proper release with a label and PR campaign and everything. You suspect this is the kind of thing people in AnCo-land make all the time: These guys live and breathe art, and in a cultural dark age where A.I. threatens to render artistic intent an old-fashioned concept, there’s something kind of noble about how much effort went into an album that’s basically an inside joke.
Geologist made these seven tracks by taking guitar recordings Shaw posted on Instagram during the pandemic and running them through his modular system until it spat out tangles of sound. The acoustic guitar has long been associated with a certain ideal of authenticity, of not needing fancy tech to get your feelings across. Here, that idea goes delightfully out the window. In Geologist’s hands, Shaw’s acoustic guitar sounds like a million other things while still resolutely sounding like itself, its notes sliding from one to another in big, oblong blocks rather than sounding plucked or strummed. “Petticoat” begins in similar territory to the West African-inspired pop doodles on Highlife’s 2010 EP Best Bless. But by the end of the track, its sound evokes a set of rubber chickens being played like a drum kit. On “Ripper Called” Shaw’s guitar could be mistaken for a squabble between woodwinds, before we hear what sounds like a giant sleeping bag being unzipped from the inside. “Route 9 Falls” splinters a fingerpicked snippet into a cascade of notes that suggests standing beneath a waterfall in the freezing cold. It’s abrasive in a purifying way.
As a birthday gift between friends, A Shaw Deal is pretty charming, but what’s in it for the casual fan? It contains no nods to pop, no moments that aim for the Beach Boys-like transcendence that permeates even Animal Collective’s looser and more improvisational releases. Your tolerance for freeform and frequently harsh-sounding guitar music determines whether A Shaw Deal will make it into your regular rotation or slot into the lesser-played ranks of the band’s catalog. But its funky, egoless spirit is infectious: less of a towering individual statement than another vivid shade in the wild splotch of color the members of Animal Collective have left across indie music.
ALBUM REVIEWS
The leather jackets and skinny jeans worn by Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy have become something of a signature, and the pair have hovered around the edges of the pop worlds in New York and Los Angeles for quite some time. First highlighted by NME during the Dimes Square resurgence in 2023, The Hellp have gradually stepped away from their earlier indie-sleaze imitation and leaned into something far more thoughtful. Their wild, neon-tinged party vibe has been traded for a more cinematic electronic approach that still holds onto a confident, self-aware attitude.
Dillon and Lucy started releasing music as The Hellp in 2016, with early mixtapes rooted in the chaotic nights and carefree behaviour once associated with NYC’s indie-sleaze staples like LCD Soundsystem and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Over time, though, they’ve earned a steadily growing respect from critics. That rise has come through both their underground gigs, which have included a show at London’s Corsica Studios with Fakemink as support, and through Dillon’s expanding visual work that recently reached Rosalía’s ‘LUX’ album and a pair of music videos for 2hollis.
As ‘Riviera’ approached release, the duo shared: “We knew our next project would need to be a bit more mature… we refuse to become stagnant. ‘Riviera’ is more solemn, restrained and impassioned than anything we’ve done before.” The finished album feels like Dillon and Lucy carefully balancing identity and openness, theatricality and direct emotion.
The lead release, ‘Country Road’, carries a late-night heaviness, the kind of confession you would quietly tell a friend in a club’s smoking area. Its lonely tone is surrounded by glitching electronics and a rising bridge that points to the exhaustion that follows endless nights out. Tracks like ‘New Wave America’ and ‘Cortt’ deepen what the duo mention in their liner notes as a “desperate story of the disparate Americana.” Both pieces broaden the album’s emotional landscape and offer clear-eyed commentary on reluctantly stepping into adulthood.
When ‘Riviera’ shifts into ‘Doppler’, the tone brightens for a moment as hopeful synths lift Dillon’s words about yearning and heartbreak into an emotional peak. And in the final moments of the record, The Hellp land on something instantly familiar to anyone who has drifted away from the club scene. The Kavinsky-like opening of ‘Here I Am’ nods to their early inspirations, while the closing track ‘Live Forever’ arrives with a slow, grounded maturity, built around Dillon repeating the line: “I don’t want to live forever.”
‘Riviera’ holds far less disorder than The Hellp’s earlier releases. This turn inward marks an important risk for a duo once fuelled by the momentum of a downtown New York comeback. By easing off the frenzy, The Hellp have stepped out of the party’s lingering haze and returned with a style that feels more refined and more aware of itself than anything they have created before.
