Animal Collective
Here Comes the Indian
Paw Tracks

The songs on The Animal Collective's Here Comes the Indian often fall on either end of a spectrum that runs between the subdued and the exaggerated, their sounds either blending into the music rather seamlessly or crashing harshly into one another. This works well; shifts in mood are a necessity the Collective seems well aware of, as sometimes their cacophony becomes almost too cacophonous and their monotony too monotonous. "Native Belle" and "Hey Light" introduce the album with quirky vocals and punk silliness. Driven by its snare and cymbal beating, "Hey Light" is the album's most frenetic and primal track, featuring a barking yell (which sounds like it's coming from a person with a very real and disturbing affinity for monkeys) that takes us to a place from which we've long evolved and introduces us to a raving lunacy socialization has labored to eradicate. "Infant Dressing Table" calms the album down with its echoed and drawn-out chants, subdued drumming and lightly picked repetitive guitar notes. The track is long and there's not much by way of change or progression, but its monotony is actually quite pleasant. "Two Sails on a Sound," a song whose production and subdued piano blankets you with a high, warm pressure, has a beautiful noisy vocal effect that swells out of the combination of cricket chirping, neighing, growling, and piano and string sounds. Its underwater density is the product of single chord repetition coupled with eleven minutes of a slow and steady build that drives the song deeper into itself in a way Godspeed You Black Emperor! might approve of. And with a great shift comes the featured "Slippi," sounding like a small drum circle led by a flipped-out shaman excited over vocal processing abilities recently bestowed upon him by an ayahuasca trip. "Too Soon" ends the album in a liminal space that sums up The Animal Collective pretty well. Here they manage to create a sharp interface between serenity and alarm with a composure that is reminiscent of Cul de Sac yet far more disquieting.




Dayna Crozier
last updated: 08/22/03

Animal Collective

AVAILABLE TRACKS
Slippi
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Musicians:
Panda Bear Avey Tare Deacon Geologist

Links:
http://www.carparkrecords.com/animal_collectives_CD.html

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