Sung Tongs,
Feels,
Strawberry Jam and
Merriweather Post Pavilion can all be found in
Ark. To call this the definitive Animal Collective album would be too easy, but isn’t it? You reader might not agree, brandishing your copy of
Feels at the screen, but I dissent: the forlorn piano of “Daffy Duck” is burrowed into “Two Sails on a Sound,” ruffling under the tonal melodies overlapping the crackle of noise and Avey Tare’s manipulated vocals.
Sung Tongs’ trance-folk centerpiece “Visiting Friends” is the aging form of “Infant Dressing Table,” its playful melancholy weighed by low blasts of droning bass. “Slippi” is the scorching psych-rock that foreshadows the escapist qualities of “Who Could Win a Rabbit” and “Lion in a Coma.” The wails puncturing the unintelligible choruses on “Native Bell” and “Hey Light” characterize the similarly abrasive
Strawberry Jam.
I say this not to overstate Animal Collective’s reliance on themes or tropes but to show that
Ark is masked by an “animalistic” nature (an important and oft praised aspect to their music) that can negate the fact that Animal Collective have, here, on
this album, perfected their craft and shaped the works to follow. The album is notable for being the first time all four members appear together, but the expected buoyancy is replaced by the fraying edges of psychedelic freak-folk brandished with traces of noise rock and left-field trance gaps. Following a bout of touring that left relationships strained,
Ark proposed a catharsis for the band members, who took the chance to “rock out.”
A week later, the album was recorded and mixed, and the rushed, uncensored obliteration on display houses songs that are intricate, surprising and poignant, an extension of their wild live personas and their more critical studio characters. And while there’s more than enough room to discuss all the treasures to a masterpiece as complete as this one having been born from the frustration and passion of simply making music, the real reason this is my favorite Animal Collective album is that, once past the off-putting abrasion of a style and production that, yes, sounds like it was captured in the middle of a forest, there are these
songs, man, and they are brilliant.
