Animal Collective - Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished - Album Review

Animal Collective’s debut record, Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, originally released under the name “Avey Tare and Panda Bear”, represents a lot of different things. For indie music, it represents the starting point of a legendary group that’s experimentation has gone unparalleled for the past twenty years. For David Portner, it represents acceptance of the death of his childhood, and his awakening as an incredible songwriter. For Noah Lennox, it represents the start of a musical friendship that would come to shake both the worlds of experimental and indie music by force. For composition, it represents a perfect fusion of beautiful melodies and cathartic noise. For the fans, it represents an overlooked gem in the catalog of the band that most people know as the group that wrote “My Girls.” For those who are not willing to open their heart to the album’s often off-putting sound, it represents “just noise”. But for me, it represents an escape, an escape to an unknown world. A world where I can walk through a forest on a dark autumn night, and see all the intricacies of nature as a child once again. It’s a place where I can feel the fire of emotions that have been extinguished by the weight of reality. A world so separate from reality, that I can laugh, scream, cry, and mourn the death of my childhood without fear of being heard by another person.

From its opening seconds, Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, is prepared to filter out the casual listener. On “Spirit They’ve Vanished” waves of feedback and noise wash over the listener’s ears like waves crashing onto the shore. This storm of sound would make the average listener immediately turn the record off. But for those with open ears and open hearts, the hypnotic loops of noise create a visceral emotional reaction. Somewhere in the chaos of the ocean of noise, there is peace to be found. The voice of Avey Tare, mixed more quietly and timid than the band’s other records, breaks through the sound and reaches out to the listener. He’s here to guide you through the noise and into the world he has created.

The second track isn’t afraid to filter the listener out either. “April and the Phantom” opens with a tiny fairy-like melody that is immediately interrupted by a rush of static. When the static clears, Avey begins to sing a story of a little girl who makes friends with a ghost. In a Sung Tongs-like fashion, this song is built around jangly, hypnotic guitars, but then transitions back and forth between this sound and beautiful synth arpeggios. This is all accompanied by Panda Bear’s perfect percussion and Avey Tare’s versatile vocals, which transition from dreamy lullabies to primal screeches. It’s all people have come to love from Animal Collective, but it’s rawer and made without the expectation of a fanbase.

The album’s third track is among one of the greatest pieces of instrumental music I’ve ever heard. It’s a sonic war between a beautiful, almost classical, piano solo, and screeches of harsh electronic noise. To me, it represents inner turmoil, a complete build-up of emotions screaming to be let out. And that’s exactly the response it elicits in me, a cathartic release of beauty and pain.

On “Penny Dreadfuls”, Avey Tare once again exposes his strengths as a songwriter and a storyteller. The song was written when he was just a teenager, for his indie band “Automine” and is the oldest song in Animal Collective’s catalog. When it was performed at his high school, it sounded like a Pavement song. But now, it has taken on new life as a piano ballad. The song details the experience of a young boy getting bullied on a school bus and a girl standing up for him. The emotion of the song slowly builds throughout its eight-minute run time, finally peaking near the seven-minute mark in which the girl yells “BULLY, YOU LEAVE MY BOY ALONE!”

“Chocolate Girl” finds Spirit’s sound at its most accessible. The noise is still there, but instead of being harsh, it washes out the song with a psychedelic atmosphere. This allows it to be a moment on the record that feels like a true pop song. On it, Avey details an old friendship through surreal imagery. It’s uncertain whether this friend was real or imaginary, but the central theme of childhood innocence remains front and center. While other songs on the record have a more somber tone about the loss of childhood, “Chocolate Girl” is a nostalgic moment that ends optimistically. Avey accepts that he can still recall his old friend as long as his mind remains open to the childlike wonder of creativity.

“La Rapet” opens with another wave of noise straight into the listener’s ears, but feels more like a folk song obscured by bright sparkly synths. About halfway through the track, the song is stripped down to just guitar and brushes on drums until rushing back into the noisy folk. As the song closes out it takes a more somber tone, as the song chills out and the atmosphere begins to envelop the listener once again. Flute-like arpeggios come in and Avey sings “the birds are calling for you please don’t follow” over and over again, in a calming tone. It sounds like a warm comfort before being released unto death, which feels tonally appropriate as the song’s title alludes to Guy de Maupassant’s “The Devil”, a short story about death.

The record’s strange style of mixing is apparent once again on “Bat You’ll Fly” as two pairs of contrasting lyrics are mixed into each channel, helping to create the chaotic psychedelic atmosphere Animal Collective is known for. Noisy synthesizers take front and center once again as the song converges into one lyrical theme, no longer separated between the channels. The lines “I feel so elusive in Houston, you feel so exclusive in Houston/I feel so elusive in Houston, you feel so reclusive in Houston” are repeated over and over. While the band’s relationship with the city is mostly unknown, it awakens a particular amount of nostalgia in me, as Houston was the city I was born in and lived around for almost all of my life.

The record ends on the monstrous “Alvin Row”, an almost thirteen-minute epic serving as the album’s thematic cornerstone. For many Animal Collective fans, including myself, this is one of the band’s best songs, a masterpiece in their catalog, and for good reason. The composition, emotional tension, and lyrical content of this song displays Avey Tare at the top of his game and foreshadows the musical mastermind he was destined to become.

The song opens with what I’d call the record’s most abrasive use of noise accompanied by free jazz piano playing, and improvisational drum fills. It’s a chaotic mess, it can be painful, but in a way it’s beautiful. My interpretation of this section of this song is to represent birth, the painful awakening of new life. When the chaos finally starts to transform into melody, Avey details the experience of a child growing into an adult. The child begins to look around, learns to speak, go to school, grow up, and pass out drunk at a new year’s party. Our protagonist begins to get disillusioned with adult life and has a deep longing to return to being a child once again. He wishes to go where there is no longer pressure to put on a facade to appease others, where it is acceptable to feel and show emotions without a filter. Musically, this first half of the song switches between quiet short piano melodies and the tension-building slamming of keys. This tension builds until the song’s halfway point. Shivers are heard in the vocals and the sparkles of synthesizers continue to build when the song is interrupted by piano glissandos and dissonant chords. Avey sings “Baby, love me”, and all the tension suddenly erupts into one of the most beautiful and emotional passages I have ever heard in music. Panda’s drumming becomes as intense as ever while Avey plays an impressive piano solo and screams “RUNNNN!” These screams are mixed quietly into the song to give an audible impression of the weight of the world collapsing around him. The song slowly builds back into a completely different melodic structure, sounding much more blissful and accepting. Avey remembers when he moved away from home and begins to reflect on both his current situation and his childhood in a more positive light. He accepts that he can take responsibility as an adult while remaining true to the child inside himself through his creativity.

Ultimately, that’s not just what this song or this record is about, it’s what defines Animal Collective’s entire mythos. Their music has always been built around unfiltered creativity between childhood friends. They make music in a way that breaks the conventions of rock, pop, and psychedelic music by simply approaching music the way a child would. They’re curious, fascinated by sound itself, and are never afraid to experiment. All of that started right here, on their first record. It’s a record that says “It’s okay to grow up, as long as you stay true to yourself”, and when I put it on, that’s exactly the message I need to hear.

Grade: A+

Listen to Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished