Animal Collective in Eastbourne. Wait, what?
The sleepy south coast plays host to avant-garde New York collective
It would probably be the first, and last time that the sheltered residents of Eastbourne would see the word ‘Supreme’ with the word ‘chicken’ preceding it. Yes, a sizeable crowd of hipsters had made the perilous journey out of London and Brighton to the mundane streets of my elderly hometown – also known as God’s waiting room.
The Winter Gardens is just moments from the pebbled beaches of the Channel. These usually play host to the likes of Lonnie Donegan Jr (who was a bit of a player in the ‘skiffle’ phenomena of the 50s apparently) and the ever popular ‘Eastbourne’s Tea Dances’ – where you can ‘trip the light fantastic’ with ‘light musical accompaniment from Chris Mannion’. Last Monday, however, it opened its doors to the avant-garde, experimental, and sometimes-unlistenable rock group Animal Collective.
Despite it seeming rather diminutive from the outside, the Winter Gardens gives a Tardis-like sense of being much larger on the inside. The roof is deceptively tall and its grand décor puts it in a similar league to KOKO. The door staff are nothing like the bald-headed geezers you find in London. They’re disarmingly friendly and seem rather bemused by all the undercuts, skinny jeans and frankly awful moustaches tramping through the door.
The evening starts with Brooklyn-based musician Deradoorian, who while inoffensive, does little more than warm up our ears; the crowd politely claps her through her set. Group Doueh, on the other hand, put on the most fun live performance that I have seen in a long time. They’re a family outfit from the Western Sahara and come on stage dressed in white polka dot sheets. They play rhythmic drum and keyboard music, and before long the whole crowd are dancing. Ok, I lie, before long myself and a group of guys who I can only describe as hippies are dancing; the rest of the crowd is frankly confused by what appears to be the North African equivalent of the Jackson 5. Their set crescendos with a sublime five-minute guitar solo from father Salmou Baamar, played behind his head. They were the word entertainment personified.
Finally it was time for Animal Collective to take the stage. Friends had warned me that they would play an unapologetically experimental set, with no or little regard for which songs their fans wanted to hear. They were right. Playing against a backdrop of psychadelic visuals, they played some seriously strange but-still-just-about-melodic music. Thumping drums bounced up through your chest as peculiar noises screwballed through the air straight into your head. It was thoroughly hypnotising and before long I started to wonder why I was so sweaty; the annoyed looks that the guy to my right was throwing me told me that I may have been dancing a bit too energetically.
When they started to play ‘Brother Sport’ I must confess that a little ecstatic voice in my head shouted ‘oh shit, I know this song!’
Unfortunately my little one man psyche-out wasn’t to last very long. London was calling and the last train back to civilization was a good 20 minutes before the gig ended. Who knows what happened at the end of the gig? Maybe they played ‘My Girls’...
