Animal Collective’s 10 Favorite Movie Soundtracks

This Friday (Nov. 18), nine months after their bright, buoyant studio album Time Skiffs, Animal Collective releases a new project in the form of The Inspection, the soundtrack to an A24 film that opens the same day.

“The Inspection is a story of a Black, gay man who joins the Marines in search of validation from and acceptance from his mother,” says star and executive producer Gabrielle Union in a teaser trailer. “It’s about the fight every day to be seen and respected.”

The film stars Jeremy Pope as Ellis French, a character inspired by director/screenwriter Elegance Bratton’s own life. And while Animal Collective probably isn’t the first band you think of when you hear the words “U.S. Marines,” Bratton feels the experimental indie outfit provided him with the “perfect backdrop” to explore various emotional states on screen.

“We were very inspired by the music of our composers Animal Collective. We wanted to create the right rhythms to blur the line between what French thinks is real and what is really happening,” Bratton explained. “So those fantasy sequences could serve as the evolution of French’s inner life. In essence, we wanted to create a sense of the stir craziness of the monotony of boot camp, juxtaposed with the massive transformation Ellis French undergoes. Animal Collective provides the perfect backdrop to shrink and expand the time according to the emotion.” (The soundtrack also features contributions from singer-songwriter Indigo de Souza.)

With The Inspection being AnCo’s second feature-length film soundtrack (following 2021’s Crestone), we asked the group to share their favorite movie soundtracks of all time. See what Avey Tare (David Portner), Geologist (Brian Weitz) and Deakin (Josh Dibb) chose below.