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[Animal Collective‘s 2004 album] Sung Tongs opts for folky ambience and late-night, summer camp sing-alongs to carry the weight (or weightlessness) of its strains. Campfire Songs, which followed Here Comes the Indian, suggested a similar kind of sprawling, communal minstrel-craft, but without much of Sung Tongs‘ flair for soaring melody and delicate, buoyant pace. As it happens, the last third of the new record does return to more of an open-ended, exploratory rote, but there it seems less a part of an endless ballad than the come-down from scenes of a jungle almost too fantastic to imagine. And despite its eclecticism and relatively Dadaist leanings, Sung Tongs is a romantic album; romantic in its celebration of innocence and nonsensical shared knowledge, and the sweet, trusted idea that everything will be fine — as if it hadn’t always been.
Musically, Animal Collective sound more “pop” here than they ever have, which is to say most of the songs have clear melodies that beg to be doubled and tripled by you or anyone else who cares to join. In songs like “Leaf House”, “Winters Love” and “College”, the duo stake a direct claim to the ideal American folk of the Beach Boys and Simon & Garfunkel, as their harmonies are pure, without suggesting perfection. As Tare and Bear leap over each other in wordless, sparkler-trail counterpoint, I think about the already-gone ambitions of “Cabinessence” and Smiley Smile. However, as Brian Wilson’s visions were damaged symphonies to god, Animal Collective don’t stop down long enough to mire in the dust left behind. — Pitchfork
OTHER NEW VINYL RELEASES:
Mister Heavenly Out of Love
John Hiatt Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns
Quicksilver Message Service Live at the Avalon Ballroom
Various Artists Street Music of Yogyakarta
Wood Brothers Smoke Ring Halo
Dead Moon Defiance
Dead Moon In the Graveyard
Dead Moon Unknown Passage
Fred McDowell/Alan Lomax Field Recordings
Ellwood Lost in Transition
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After 2007’s awkward ‘Some Loud Thunder’, the Brooklyn indie rock wannabes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, decided on self-imposed hibernation and a bout of prolonged navel-gazing. The process of reassessment was inspirational – ‘Hysterical’ is their finest record to date. Produced by Texan hard-nut John Congleton, studio album number three is huge in scope and song-craft, delivered by a band displaying a maturity to add to the promise of their 2005 debut. Be it the punch of ‘Maniac’, the electric surge of ‘Into Your Alien Arms’ or the straining romanticism of ‘Yesterday, Never’, CYHSY have created an album that is both jubilant and disarmingly vulnerable. Their future starts now. – Clash
