Label: Paw Tracks Format: CD,LP
From the acid-drenched woodland scenes of the band members lurking in a mirror wilderness on the cover to the music itself, Here Comes The Indian screams and drones and scrawls with psychedelic brightness and insanity. The Animal Collective yell and chant, whip up frenzied percussive grooves from nothing then let them rip into splashes of unhinged harmonious melody – the lysergic force is almost physical, as deliriously fragmented arrangements skip from slow handclap group unconscious singalongs into soundscapes of noises off and murmured words processed from direct from the undergrowth.
The group seem content to let their whims guide the course of any one track, while succeeding in holding back the chaos to levels of listenable dementia for the most part with the practised ease of improv selectivity. Massed echo effects and overloaded bass rumbles circled by the drawn-out plucking of guitar strings soon dissolve the doors of perception; “Panic” seems particularly appropriate a track title for a peyote-addled journey into the sound of an infinite number of shamen (or is it just the collective One?) tripping out their superego with the intensity of what sounds like a multi-dimensional totem sheep.
The gentle pastoral cicada comedown of “Two Sails On A Sound” is soon brought up to shuddering levels of heavy-pedalled piano disturbance while the electronic wind wails, but it’s the propulsive punky outburst “Slippi” which explodes the disc into an impassioned spasm of manic joi de vivre in a scorching outburst of rattly percussion and brazen distortion – and it’s also the only moment resembling conventional song structure on the album. “Too Soon” invokes the spirit of Faust past and never-ending cosmic jams yet to be in a halting shimmer of liquid drips, reined in drum rolls and far-flung vocal treatments – and suddenly it’s all over.
Intriguing and at times inspired in their passion, The Animal Collective are a band to watch – conveniently, Fat Cat will also be reissuing the band’s first two albums as a double CD before the end of 2003, with plenty of new material in the pipeline from various band member projects on their Paw Tracks label too.
-Antron S. Meister-
