Mention a duo playing guitar and drums in the current climate and the immediate image springing to mind is of yet another pair of White Stripes clones, so when I tell you ANIMAL COLLECTIVE's duopoly of Avery Tare and Panda Bear (no, I'm not making this up) play guitars and drums you'll have an idea where they're coming from, right?
Actually, no you don't. Indeed, while Avery and Panda may (very broadly) work with guitar and drums, to come to such a conclusion would be so far wide of the mark it would be entirely redundant, for "Sung Tongs" - created mostly from acoustic guitar (joyful through to murderous in well under sixty seconds), drums (toms, shakers, castanets and what could well be bones of differing varieties) and layered vocals often approaching psychosis - finds this pair of sonic Brooklynites teetering on the edge of both artiness and anarchy as it proceeds.
From the off, "Sung Tongs" is both determinedly out-there and close on unclassifiable. Opener "Leaf House" pits hypnotic, layered vocals against a guitar strummed in a manner best described as 'distressing', while the rolling percussion appears to be from another universe altogether. Follow up tune "Who Could Win A Rabbit" proves it was no fluke and struggles to come in under the term 'left field', though its' handclaps are entirely loveable.
To be fair, much of what ensues is often fascinating. "Sung Tongs" does contain beauty of sorts, and the melting, soft-focus vocals and woodpecker percussion of "The Softest Voice", the all-too brief world-music-in-the- playpen of the jazzy "Sweet Road" and the truly weird "Kids On Holiday" are all high points. It's nigh on impossible to work out what makes up the backdrop of the latter, as it suggests backwards masking, Jew's harp, seagulls and basic loops, but whatever it's probably the best track to feature both "hibernation" and "Krishna" in one lyric.
|
Elsewhere, this disquieiting approach can really grate. "Visiting Friends" is tuneless strumming and just taking the piss basically, as is the annoying wah-wah vocal workout "Whaddit I Done", while "Good Lovin' Outside" sounds like an out-there version of The Flaming Lips with little green men on backing vocals. By comparison, other potentially good ideas get squandered, such as "College", which - despite sounding like it was recorded on a walkman in a wet bus shelter - has glorious, Beach Boys type harmonies. For a few seconds only.
So there you have it. Animal Collective make an unholy cacophony from objects as supposedly well-worn as simple acoustic guitar, drums and vocals and certainly rejoice in ripping up any genre rulebook you care to mention, but sadly the results aren't consistent enough to convincingly beguile over 50 long minutes.Where will they go from here? On the basis of this, God only knows.
|
