Animal Collective are just ending the most active down year in any recent bands history, with Avey Tare releasing an album, Panda Bear with with much hyped Tomboy and Deakin going on a pretty extensive touring circuit as well as recording his solo record, and now they’re sort of concluding that before their next album cycle, with a special cassette being released with the purchase of shoes manufactured by Keep. Don’t worry if you didn’t get the shoes, I’m sure a nice google search will quench your thirst.
The first solo track, entitled “Jailhouse” by our favorite head-lamp wearing electronics man, Geologist, is mostly an exerpt from a piece that Animal Collective did at the Guggenheim Museum last year, entitled Transversal Temporal Gurus. It’s oddly enough what you’d expect from Geologist. Most ambient songs floating in and out of the soundspace. Heavily maniupulated vocals seem to drone throughout the entire piece, while various electronic bloops and blips appear. It’s a very relaxing song, though I can’t claim much to how memorable it will be.
I sort of had high expectations with Avey Tare’s track, “Call Home (Buy Grapes)” and it sort of disappointed. The instrumentals were definitely in the same key as Down There, which I enjoyed quite a lot, but the vocals were manipulated sort of in the key of something you’d find on the latter half of Sung Tongs, which works with the acoustic feel of that album, not this one. But again, the instruments are what make this piece worth a bit of time.
The third track, by the “lost member of AnCo” Deakin, who sat out Merriweather Post Pavilion, entitled “Country Report” is by far my most favorite of the cassette, with a piano loop sort of like “In the Flowers” in the back before a strong drum sample comes in. Deakin’s vocals are sort of like a scuba diving trip, swarming with reverb, echo and other things, in Deakin’s very baritone range, when he yelps “I don’t have to come up” you can almost see divers towards the end of their trip.
The last track, probably most anticipated by the public, by Panda Bear entitled “The Preakness,” after our beloved home state’s annual horserace/excuse to get really drunk. It’s more similar to something you’d find off of Person Pitch then Tomboy, with a steady beat in the background over very monotonous guitars. It’s a very calming jam, sort of like “Ponytail;” and I can’t help but get this smile on my face when he sings “I’m not into passing on a judgment of passion/I’d like just to say to keep up.”
Overall, it’s enough to keep me satisfied for a bit, especially with Tomboy coming out soon, and a slew of new bootlegs bound to come from the groups upcoming tours in California and Europe.
