“Persian kitties better stay out of the train.”
Finally, Animal Collective realizes that they can make pleasant sounding music that is still experimental, that trying new things does not necessarily mean those things can’t be influenced by the old. The result is the enchanting Sung Tongs, an album bursting with creativity, but channeled through acoustic guitars, pop melodies, and clean(er) production rather than ear-splitting electronic noise. Gone are the heavy effects of Indian and the grating synth experiments of Danse (there’s still some use of gadgetry, but it’s subdued and supportive rather than front and center), and the freak-folk-pop of Spirit returns to the center stage and fulfills the promise of the debut album.
The clean and careful production stands in stark contrast to the muddiness of Campfire Songs, as the guitars are mixed well and sound pleasant. Just like that album, though, what stands out here are the excellent vocals from Avey Tare and Panda Bear. They haven’t yet allowed Brian Wilson to inform their melodies to quite the degree they would on later albums (‘College’ is undeniably a Beach Boys imitation though); instead their carefully woven vocal interactions recall some of the psych-folk acts of the late 1960s like The Incredible String Band, T. Rex, or Vashti Bunyan (who joined the band for Prospect Hummer the next year).
Take the opener ‘Leaf House’ for instance. Before we’re a minute in, we have three different voices yipping, oohing, and singing arpeggiated melodies. It’s darn impressive; probably not as beautiful as it could be, but you can almost hear them smiling when they played it back and realized, “Hey, this is creative and the average simpleton might dig it too.” Midway through the song, the acoustic guitars and drums fade to the background, and a series of eh’s and ah’s build to a vocal crescendo, blurring together (I assume through studio trickery) into a sound that seems non-vocal; then the song resets to the “uh uh uh ah” pulsing vocals that it began with. Musical tension, creativity, pop melodies, all in one song? Yes, please.
Sung Tongs was Animal Collective’s most accessible album up to that point in their career, but still has its share of low points. There are a few hypnotic, droning experiments that fail to land. The problem with these is you can’t just nonchalantly tuck them in between two pop songs and expect the album to flow well, because they’re behemoths. ‘The Softest Voice’ starts with promise but devolves into tedious repetition, while ‘Visiting Friends’ is the longest offender and clocks in at over twelve minutes in length. The latter is actually pretty decent—an imitation of Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas albums, substituting acoustic guitars and vocal hums for the steady droning loops and submerged kick drums of Königsforst and Pop—but it clashes when nestled in with the shorter pop songs. That is to say, I really like the song, but it isn’t integrated well into the album. However, both of those experiments are pleasant compared to the foible that is ‘Kids on Holiday’.
This is the first album where it seems like Animal Collective really settled into the style that they’ve iterated on with their studio albums for the past decade and a half. They’ve got the aesthetics down, and churn out several real earworms that remain true to their inner child. The vocals are exceptional and complex, and the album just oozes creativity. It doesn’t connect with all of its experiments, but for the first time it actually fun to listen to.
Favorite Tracks: Leaf House; Who Could Win A Rabbit; Visiting Friends.