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It's a bit unfair and perhaps even inaccurate to lump the Animal Collective in with the core players of the freak folk scene; yet many a young music scribe puts them right up there with freak folk progenitors Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. Rather than trying to retrospectively emulate the ghosts of Greenwich Villages former folk scene (like Tiny Tim or Karen Dalton), the Animal Collective are much more interested in fusing shards of that bygone, bearded bard sect with more relevant ideas and astral experiments. Sure, like Banhart, they got 1960s folkie chanteuse Vashti Bunyan to lay down some sweet vocal tracks on their 2004 EP Prospect Hummer, but the end result of their product is more a collage of sonic textures that braid in and out of an idealized acoustic folk revival (rather than a straight-up mirror of the styles). In fact, their first release Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished only used folk as one color on their palate. They Frankensteined dislocated psychedelia with ambient soundscapes and angular noise rock to create a beautiful monster of madness and (sometimes) melody. But it was 2004's Sung Tongs that further realized those scattered ideas, forging them into psych-heavy sing-alongs that garnered them many a critical comparison to the Incredible String Band as well as the Holy Modal Rounders (again with the folknik panning). What many of their critics seemed to miss was that Animal Collective are able to merge a plethora of sounds and textures that weren't available to the aforementioned cult heroes of MOJO magazine's folk shrine, and if you have to compare them to anyone, it would be more appropriate to lump their advancement of psychedelic music in with the songs and ideas of Athens, Georgia's Elephant6 Collective. And we're not just saying that because both outfits have the word "collective" in their names. |