I don’t know, I kept dismissing Animal Collective for years — too twee, too annoying, too faux-artsy-fartsy. And then I heard this song and I couldn’t stop listening to it, sad chaotic and I didn’t know why; and then I heard “what would I want? sky” and I fell in love with the singalong and “My Girls” is very sweet and bizarro like a male Bjork. But I kept coming back to “Cuckoo Cuckoo”. In the broader sense it’s about losing childhood and sorrow, but in the more specific sense I am pretty sure it’s about a miscarriage. Note the album version has the last verse as “where’s my friend i wanna hold him tight” but this live version it’s definitely “where’s my wife i wanna hold her tight”. The piano part samples are so mellow and ordered — I want to say Chopin but it doesn’t feel sharp enough and I’m too lazy to google it out. Liszt maybe?

How I lost my boy

The king in I died
He kept floating past my eyes
And singing his songs
Life was good now death’s all wrong
Cause you can’t feel a thing
No heart flutters in late spring
You just drift and pray
For sun kissed golden days

And I can’t hold what’s in my hand
Don’t do any good to say this isn’t what I planned
And little kids sliding down the steel park slide
Little kids can’t play with things that have died
Sometimes all I want is one favorite song
And two to three minutes don’t seem so long
And where’s my mom I want to hold her tight
She’s so far away from crowded nights
I’m going cuckoo cuckoo
We’re all going cuckoo cuckoo

He said please stay
You can see me, don’t go away
I can’t see the landscape
Please describe its amaranthine haze
It’s odd where I am
There are people you’re not like them
They just look away
For rain quenched golden days

And my tears quench five feet of lawn
And I can scream, but I cannot yawn
And people gonna come and people gonna cry
He just woke and dreamt and ate and died
Don’t try and erase what you have done
Put your fingers in a mouth and kiss it if it wants
And where’s my wife, I want to hold her tight
He’s so far away from mountain lights
I’m going cuckoo cuckoo
We’re all going cuckoo cuckoo

artist is Jesse Owen Youngs, song is “Fuck Was I”