Animal Collective - Spirit They're Gone Spirit They've Vanished (2000)
Neo-Psychedelia / Art Pop / Noise
Undoubtedly the landmark year in terms of rapid expansion of my music tastes was 2007, the year spanning the end of high school and the start of undergrad. Living on campus for the first time and trading mp3s with other like-minded music nerds led to a snowballing evolution of my digital library, and each new genre I was exposed to left a dramatic imprint on my aural sensibilities going forward. It was that same fall when I discovered Animal Collective, soon to become my favorite band for almost two decades and counting, through the release of their album Strawberry Jam, which at the time was the newest addition to their universally acclaimed lineup of untouchable experimental pop records that began with 2004's Sung Tongs, from an older student I was dating who was eager to share the fruits of his own collecting.
I was quickly obsessed, especially since my initial experiences with Strawberry Jam coincided with my first few effective exposures to marijuana, and soon eagerly devoured everything in Animal Collective's back catalog that I could get my hands on. The aforementioned Sung Tongs and 2005's Feels fell in place with Strawberry Jam almost instantly, but their less structured and more abrasive earlier records proved to be comparatively elusive to my developing interest. Spirit They're Gone Spirit They've Vanished, the most accessible of the bunch perhaps unexpectedly since it was a nascent collaboration between just two of the shapeshifting group's members, was the first to worm its way into my psyche and, considering I now have a tattoo of the twin seraphim from its original cover inked into my right thigh, it had no intention of loosening its grip on me in the years that followed.
Spirit, the first in a pair of albums that challenge the listener with their incorporation of extreme frequencies, hits that same sweet spot riding the ridge between endearingly pop song structures and psychedelic noise as the more refined albums in the band's catalog, despite being the initial document of their formative years before they found their collective identity and the iconic sound that came with it. The best example of this is the titular opener "Spirit They've Vanished" which immediately smacks listeners across the face with a barrage of squalling white noise before Avey's soft coos materialize behind the curtain of static with a forlorn lullaby lamenting childhood's end, and in fact the hiss exploding out of the composition even proved too much for the aux-to-radio adapter I had been using to play music from my iPod in my car to handle, which simply refused to transmit any of it through the stereo speakers.
That didn't stop me from replaying the record through other means, though, and since I was home for winter break at that point I had nothing better to do than damage my ears while going for walks in the snow, imagining that the white noise killing off my stereocilia one by one was instead a flurry of snowflakes being whipped about by the biting wind of an incoming blizzard. This imagery somehow brought me immense calm, and to this day I remember those walks fondly whenever I find myself blanketed in a muted haze following a particularly loud event.
With the exception of the shrieking noise collages of "Untitled" and "Everyone Whistling", the rest of the record stabilizes the VU meter somewhat so that Avey Tare's already fully-formed songwriting chops can shine through on some of the most epic ballads in the entire Animal Collectiverse that all mine the same nostalgic territory, both lyrically and with their tinny tinker-toy harmonics, as the opener: "Penny Dreadfuls", "Chocolate Girl", "La Rapet" and "Alvin Row". All of the identifiably Animal elements (primal yelps that enhance climactic moments, slow and deliberate builds of tension through hypnotic minor-key repetition, gratifying release from tribal drums splashing out of glistening puddles of sound, etc.) were present in these early recordings, and with Spirit They're Gone Spirit They've Vanished the now-iconic duo of Avey Tare and Panda Bear showed right off the bat just how masterfully they can balance emotionally cathartic melodies with restlessly playful and chaotic accompaniment.
Comments
Post a Comment