If it's possible to condense Animal Collective's 12-year career in a single line, Avey Tare does the trick when, deep into Centipede Hz, he cries, "Why am I still looking for a golden age?" By all measurable standards, this is Animal Collective's golden age: Their last album, 2009's Merriweather Post Pavilion, capped a remarkable decade-long journey that saw the band evolve from psych-folk recording project to top-billed digi-pop tweakers. But their popularity hasn't made them any more populist. Even as their songs have grown more melodically and emotionally accessible, their music has grown ever more indefinable. Theirs is the rarest, most enviable form of success: one born not of conforming to audiences' expectations but of constantly confounding them. Avey's refutation of his golden age suggests that, for Animal Collective, happiness is a function of never feeling fully satisfied with what you've accomplished, and continually challenging yourself.

Nowhere in the Animal Collective discography has that sense of unease felt so pronounced as on Centipede Hz. The band's latest album is to Merriweather as Strawberry Jam was to Feels-- the anxious flipside to an ecstatic predecessor. But its execution is even more relentless. Animal Collective have always embraced a certain back-to-nature ethos, but Centipede Hz is noticeably urban in feel. Beyond the references to their native Baltimore, these bustling songs are tied together by radio broadcast snippets and ad samples that feel very much like a comment on 21st-century sensory overload (an experience presaged by the band's own recent experiences as free-form radio hosts). Even the album cover looks like an interstitial from U2's Zoo TV multimedia blitzkrieg.

With multi-instrumentalist Deakin re-joining the band after a four-year hiatus, they've never before hit with such blunt force. The rippling rhythms and aquatic ambience of Merriweather is displaced by industrial-strength ballast: Lead-off track "Moonjock" announces itself with a morse-code crunch that could practically pass for Sleigh Bells, while stuttering lead single "Today's Supernatural" closes with the sort of drum-set-toppling flourish that arena-rock acts use to stretch out their last encore. These songs get Centipede Hz off to a deliriously disorienting start, showcasing the band's ability to coax sing-song melodies out of a melee. But as the album progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that Centipede Hz's over-caffeinated energy comes at the expense of what, for all their restless creativity, has always been Animal Collective's greatest virtue-- their patience.

From Sung Tongs' "Kids on Holiday" and Feels' "Banshee Beat" to Strawberry Jam's "Fireworks" and Merriweather's "My Girls", Animal Collective's greatest moments have conveyed a shared sense of discovery. There's a sense of something special being slowly revealed, of chaotic rhythms, harmonies, and atmospheres gradually cohering into glorious moments of clarity before dissolving into the ether. Centipede Hz, by comparison, feels like someone throwing a burrito on your windshield: The songs hit with a jolt, instantly splaying all their ingredients before you.

The result feels overly busy and static at the same time. And the songwriting here can't always keep pace amid all the percussive clatter and synth-noise splatter jacked up in the mix, the melodic through-lines of ceaselessly twitchy tracks like "Mercury Man" and "Applesauce" getting lost in the whirr. The two contributions from Panda Bear, in particular, underwhelm: "Rosie Oh" is another future-shocked Beach Boys fantasia in the vein of Strawberry Jam's "Chores", but comes to an abrupt, unsatisfying end; the more downcast "New Town Burnout", originally written for his dubwise 2011 solo release Tomboy, is too sluggish and distant to touch the heights of his best Animal Collective songs. And while Deakin's oscillating reverie "Wide Eyed" now makes more sense as a more straightforward mid-album breather than it did as the opening song at the band's main-stage Coachella set last year, his conversational vocal style doesn't have enough character to carry the five-minute song.

Animal Collective have enjoyed a remarkable creative and popular ascent, the sort of trajectory that is almost impossible to sustain in perpetuity. With Centipede Hz, Animal Collective have delivered a cluttered, abrasive album that confirms their naysayers' exaggerated perceptions of the band. But even a patchy Animal Collective album yields several exceptional songs. Beyond the bracing "Moonjock"/"Today's Supernatural" double shot, there's the magnificent "Monkey Riches" (featuring the lyric quoted at the top of this review), where Avey's increasingly exasperated vocal syncs perfectly with the surging, tribal funk.

The resplendent closer "Amanita" arrives with a fanfare fit for a king but also questions its ostentatious surroundings: "What have we done, what have we done," Avey and Panda sing in unison, "Fantasy is falling down." It's a song that seems to acknowledge Animal Collective's unlikely position as a mainstream-breaching phenomenon, before busting open an escape hatch from a world of scrutiny and expectation. As it shifts into its giddy, double-timed denouement, Avey excitedly chants, "What are you gonna do/ Go into the forest/ Until I can't remember my name!" After pushing their maximal, strobe-lit aesthetic to fatiguing extremes, perhaps a retreat back into the wild is just what Animal Collective need.