October 25, 2010

Album Review: Avey Tare - Down There (Paw Tracks)

The Animal Collective solo album is no revelation, but it’s played out beautifully

Curious beast, the Animal Collective solo album. On one hand, you’ve got a fine specimen like Panda Bear’s 2007 effort ‘Person Pitch’, which splashed through sunny lagoons a stone’s throw from land the Collective would later explore more thoroughly with 2009’s massively acclaimed career highpoint ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’. Then on the other, you’ve got something like ‘Pullhair Rubeye’, an album Dave ‘Avey Tare’ Portner recorded with his wife Kría Brekkan, then released playing backwards (the polite term being ‘inessential’).

Happily, Portner’s newie, ‘Down There’, is far easier to recommend. The adorable ‘Heads Hammock’ fuses IDM bleeps to tumbling self-looped vocal harmonies and carnival drums, while elsewhere, echo and reverb is slathered on with a hall-of-mirrors effect, guitars and keys melting and bending like warm candle wax. To be completely honest, it’s no revelation – at times the music feels incomplete, like a lonesome Portner is missing his bros – but it’s played out beautifully, sunny in disposition and just a little wild around the edge.

Louis Pattison

Click here to get your copy of Avey Tare's 'Down There' from Rough Trade Shops.

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