Animal Collective - Here Comes the Indian
(Paw Tracks)
After much deliberation, I decided that the only fair way to review Here Comes the Indian was to describe the album from beginning to end. "Native Belle" opens quietly, with a simple drum-beat resembling the sound of two small sticks being hit together, before erupting into an effects laden pop spasm. "Hey Light" begins in a similar fashion, only with extraterrestrial moans, loud snare interruptions and animal calls, but soon builds with grating guitar into the album's first conventional melodic passage. "Infant Dressing Table" is the mystic journey we have been waiting for Animal Collective to undertake, and is the most representative of their primal animalistic personas. Starting with scraping guitar and distant calls, it eventually escalates into a full tribal offensive.
"Panic" opens abruptly, with loud chants that slowly break down under their own weight. By this time you may have noticed a trend. Here Comes the Indian is unusual as much for its manipulation of the sound-making process as its alternate tunings, odd time signatures and instrumentals. It is in this approach to sound that Animal Collective have risen above other similar-minded art pop bands, who rarely tamper with tradition mix levels for guitar, bass, vocals and drums. Animal Collective, meanwhile, have gone to the mixer and effects box knobs to get a fresh sound.
With "Two Sails on a Sound" Animal Collective release their epic, with a slow repetitive, piano line that boils beneath the glitch and hiss, soon joined by a now familiar, but no less powerful, robotic vocal. "Slippi" is in the album's anomaly. Animal Collective let loose a rock track that manages to blend their light, elfin aesthetic with loud rock abrasion. "Two Soon" was likely the result of substantial manipulation, but has a conventional pop centre, buried under effects.
There, I did my best. Now it's up to you, good reader, to seek out Here Comes the Indian and decide if I was even close.
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