Down There
Album | Avey Tare
Animal Collective member drifts into the ether.
Animal Collective—once considered one of indie-rock’s weirdest outfits—has been creeping slowly towards traditional pop music as the band’s fame continues to rise. However, the opposite can be said of the group’s various side projects. Avey Tare’s Down There (much like the solo work of fellow AC member Panda Bear) takes the loopy, synthy, and often formless sounds of Animal Collective and pushes them even further into the ether. The nine tracks here form a kind of watery tone poem: a collection of echo-filled vibrations that often just barely register as proper songs. With the exception of “Oliver Twist” and “Lucky 1” most of the music is heavy on atmosphere and slight on form, which makes for lovely mood music but leaves one hungry for the goofy popisms that have made recent Animal Collective records such bonafide crowd-pleasers.
-
Music Review
Beast Rest Forth Mouth
Bear in HeavenAppealingly inscrutable noise gets bonus remixes.
>> -
Music Review
Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal CollectiveFocuses freewheeling experimentalism into relatively concise song structures
>>
