With the cancellation of Levitation Fest 2016 due to flooding, concert promoters worked furiously into Thursday night to set up make up shows at venues across Austin. The first wave of new shows announced featured a highly anticipated performance by Animal Collective at Emo’s on Saturday, April 30th.

Upon viewing the elaborate stage set up in the cavernous venue, you could see why Animal Collective was not going to let some storm stop the show. As the audience of displaced festival-goers lucky enough to snatch up tickets walked into Emo’s, they encountered an an elaborate altar-like arrangement that looked like a riff on Picasso’s cubist sculptures and drawings. It was a fitting artistic installation that matched a performance that was tribal at times, and as complex as a modern art masterpiece at others.

The t-shirt-and-jean-clad band members manned their consoles and drum kit and kicked off the show with the 2016 track “Hounds of Bairro” that featured the signature melodic acrobatics of Lennox’s and Portner’s voices on top of happy, bouncing beats. With the exception of “Daily Routine” from the 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion, the show mostly featured new material from their latest release, Painting With. The trippy, drippy song “Lying in the Grass” early in the set and faster-tempo “The Burglars” later in the set were a little more dance-friendly and provided a nice foil to the more contemplative and monastic-sounding tunes such as “Loch Raven.”

After a brief intermission the band returned to their stations for their encore of three songs. When Animal Collective ended the show with “FloriDada,” it didn’t seem to matter where the band was playing. The catchy new tune had the whole joint moving and for one moment, at least, people got lost in the music and forgot about how bummed they were about the cancellation of Levitation Festival.