After much teasing, Animal Collective have officially announced plans for their new album Time Skiffs. The record is due on February 4 through Domino, and today, they're sharing lead single "Prester John."
According to a release, the track was created by the group's Avey Tare and Panda Bear weaving two separate songs together. It arrives alongside a music video directed by Jason Lester, which you can watch below.
The song joins the short nine-track release, Animal Collective's full-length follow-up to 2016's Painting With. Recorded over the course of 2020 and mixed by Marta Salogni, the album is described as "love letters, distress signals, en plein air observations, and relaxation hymns, the collected transmissions of four people who have grown into relationships and parenthood and adult worry."
A release further described the record as follows:
For these 47 minutes, you feel like you belong somewhere else, like you've returned to a place that feels both familiar and foreign, where reality is bent just enough to suggest some beautiful new horizon. Enjoy the trip to whenever and wherever these time skiffs may take you.
Time Skiffs marks the group's first studio album in five years, however, the band and its solo offshoots have remained active in the interim. In 2019, AnCo celebrated the 10th anniversary of Merriweather Post Pavilion with a live album titled Ballet Slippers. That same year, Avey Tare shared his Conference of Birds / Birds in Disguise EP, while Panda Bear released Buoys and Deakin and Geologist contributed to Marnie Ellen Hertzler's Crestone soundtrack. Panda's A Day with the Homies arrived a year earlier.
Watch the video for "Prester John" below, where you'll also find the record's tracklisting.
Time Skiffs:
1. Dragon Slayer
2. Car Keys
3. Prester John
4. Strung with Everything
5. Walker
6. Cherokee
7. Passer-by
8. We Go Back
9. Royal and Desire
According to a release, the track was created by the group's Avey Tare and Panda Bear weaving two separate songs together. It arrives alongside a music video directed by Jason Lester, which you can watch below.
The song joins the short nine-track release, Animal Collective's full-length follow-up to 2016's Painting With. Recorded over the course of 2020 and mixed by Marta Salogni, the album is described as "love letters, distress signals, en plein air observations, and relaxation hymns, the collected transmissions of four people who have grown into relationships and parenthood and adult worry."
A release further described the record as follows:
For these 47 minutes, you feel like you belong somewhere else, like you've returned to a place that feels both familiar and foreign, where reality is bent just enough to suggest some beautiful new horizon. Enjoy the trip to whenever and wherever these time skiffs may take you.
Time Skiffs marks the group's first studio album in five years, however, the band and its solo offshoots have remained active in the interim. In 2019, AnCo celebrated the 10th anniversary of Merriweather Post Pavilion with a live album titled Ballet Slippers. That same year, Avey Tare shared his Conference of Birds / Birds in Disguise EP, while Panda Bear released Buoys and Deakin and Geologist contributed to Marnie Ellen Hertzler's Crestone soundtrack. Panda's A Day with the Homies arrived a year earlier.
Watch the video for "Prester John" below, where you'll also find the record's tracklisting.
Time Skiffs:
1. Dragon Slayer
2. Car Keys
3. Prester John
4. Strung with Everything
5. Walker
6. Cherokee
7. Passer-by
8. We Go Back
9. Royal and Desire