Animal Collective: Electronic Recordings from a Field (Part Two)

Tea for WeirdosAs the trappings that adorn Animal Collective's music have shifted, its songs still function as a momentary peak into what the dudes are up to. The straight forward lyrics of "My Girls," from the group's newest disc, Merriweather Post Pavilion, provide listeners with little reason for conjecture. The repeated chorus of, With a little girl, and by my spouse I only want a proper house seems as explicit as "Single Girl, Married Girl" from the Carter Family in which disparate life styles get a quick going over. Of course these lyrics might just be the opinion of Avey Tare. But longing for pedestrian domesticity, as related by Deakin most unequivocally figured in a late 2007 Montreal Mirror piece, dissuaded him from appearing on this newest album and subsequent touring.

Dismissing the traditional folksy mold in which the group's lyrics fit, the following track from Merriweather relies as heavily upon vocals as any other effort in the collective's discography. "Also Frightened" and its repeated question not only exercise man's oldest instrument over an overbearing drum pattern, but the spate of animals mentioned in the song's first verse recalls any number of selections from the Anthology of American Folk Music - "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" perhaps.

Even if Animal Collective's sound now only has a passing reference to folk musics and member's have decried being occasionally lumped into the freak folk category, the heavy reliance on acoustic guitar up until the 2007 Strawberry Jam and the group's newly minted Merriweather make the connection strongly enough.

"Visiting Friends" from what some figure to be the band's break through disc, Sung Tongs, leans on a single strummed guitar chord for over ten minutes. This one element gets a full digital make over, is paired with a modicum of sounds, scratches, warbles and vocal snippets, but remains an integral piece of the final product. Again, this isn't to figure that the band sat on a mountain side all day practicing one mystical note, but in recording what very well may have been a musician's private moment, the band documents the lives of a few Americans.

Every step that Animal Collective has taken, while informed by technology in some way, has raised listener's eyebrows. And as early as 2003's Campfire Songs, nature sounds captured via a mini-disc player, watched over by Geologist, serve as background atmospherics for each of the five extended compositions on that album. Many maintain that the Animal Collective's catalog encompasses a great deal of variety. That's debatable, but it's not contestable that the group's sound is partially derived from its inclination towards electronics and the lessened reliance upon acoustic instruments that serve to enliven recordings from America's past.

While Animal Collective may refute the inclusion of folk in terms of placing the group's sound in any sort of description ghetto, the recording process and the history involved in the music places the band on that terrain. When Harry Smith began collecting 78s, the full length album didn't yet exist, but he knew that to conserve some period in history was as important an act as creating the music.