Bonnaroo

Can laptop bands jam? Of course, and that’s what it sounded like Animal Collective was doing in a beautifully dizzying set. Most of its equipment was on tabletops, along with microphones and some percussion, and its songs floated up out of an electronic haze: samples and maybe synthesizer parts that looped and burbled, clinked and scraped, arpeggiated and whizzed upward, the makings of songs from its latest album “Merriweather Post Pavilion.” When enough of them are interlocked, band members started singing the handful of lyrics in each song, sometimes overlapping or staggering them for another layer of counterpoint. It seemed open-ended; when they were done, they just let the mix dissolve back into the electronic ooze and teased out a new collection of song parts. READ MORE...– Jon Pareles