What Everyone is Saying About Feed the Animals

I feel a real connection to virtually all music bloggers. It's rare that there is an album that every single one of us buys on the day of its release and feels compelled to write about it. On the third day of "Feed the Animals Week," we will look at how the critical music community at large views this album. Tomorrow, I will get wordy again with a post entitled - "Feed the Animals and Postmodernism: Girl Talk as Andy Warhol."

Choice quotes:

"Oh man, the 'Steal My Sunshine' sample. lolz for days. Bookending the album with 'International Players Anthem (I Choose You)' is pretty great, as is the extended "Roc Boys" over "Paranoid Android" section in 'Set It Off,' which would be jam of the year material if it lasted for longer than a minute." -David Greenwald, The Rawking Refuses To Stop

"People actually dance at Girl Talk shows. I'm not quite sure how this happens, but it does.... [A]t the Pitchfork festival last year, things got even weirder: as Gillis hunched over his laptop on the festival's fenced-in third-stage, a massive crowd converged: climbing trees, hanging off chain-link fences, whooping from across the street. For music so based in catching references as they fly by, Girl Talk sure seems to inspire a lot of dumbing out." -Tom Breihan, Status Ain't Hood

"That’s the beauty of Girl Talk: it’s not just a gimmick. Totally by coincidence, just last week I happened to be listening to Night Ripper for the first time in a while, and I realized that the album was still as good as the first time I’d heard it, if not better. It wasn’t just the surprise of hearing all the familiar hits rubbing up against each other—that wears off quickly. On the contrary, the canny musicality that I had detected on first blush shone through even after the gimmick had faded. Girl Talk’s collages are so effective because they work with the music itself, highlighting the best or most effective bits from hundreds of songs without bothering to keep any of the dross." -Tim O'Neil, PopMatters

"I think his strength isn’t putting disparate elements together–there are so many good mash-up artists that can do that–but putting so many disparate samples together in a way that’s still good and musical." -Adrian, ipickmynose

"[T]he album is more than just a gimmick: Gillis makes some samples sound like brand-new music with a more complicated message: One striking sequence on "Play Your Part (Pt. One)" pairs "Hunger Strike," Temple of the Dog's shout-out to poor folks, with Ludacris' cash-celebrating "What's Your Fantasy." And when Gillis sets Jay-Z's "Roc Boys" over Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" on "Set It Off," Hova's words take on darkness not apparent in the original. Rarely is postmodern art such bloody good fun." -Christian Hoard, Rolling Stone

"Attempting to explain Feed The Animals and identify what succeeds or fails with the set can’t be done on the level of an album in its entirety, it’s hard to even approach each track on an individual basis considering what they are.... The end product of his work is a piece of music that is almost impossible to recall, a piece of music that is fresh every time it is heard because of the fact that it passes the listener by with lightning-like speed." -Culture Bully

Video - Greg Gillis on Talking Head TV