At the break in “Winters Love,” from Animal Collective’s feral, sentimental Sung Tongs, when the guitar picks up and Avey Tare and Panda Bear’s voices flail like children who know they’ll never die, it occurs to me that youth isn’t always wasted on the young. This is an old cliche, about how kids can never really appreciate the finer aspects of immaturity—in fact, it’s their immaturity and naivete that all the gray adults crave like zombies. It’s a child’s lack of self-conscience and “common sense” that make them holy, just as it’s an adult’s knowledge of their own mortality that makes them a little bit dead. However, even if the sickly, aching adults might long for days spent wasting precious time and forgetting precious lessons, most of them wouldn’t turn back the clock if given the chance. Youth isn’t wasted on the young at all, because only kids on holiday could afford to leave their hearts exposed for so long, to sing as loudly and to take so much for granted. Rather, wisdom is wasted on the old.
Since their first release, Brooklyn’s Animal Collective have soundtracked the surreal, manic experience of “immature” euphoria. In fact, the Tare/Bear duo responsible for Sung Tongs is the same that issued 2000’s Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, a singular, idiosyncratic take on fairy tale folk and starchild pop. Fairy tales and star-children: These are impressions of “The Beyond” for imaginative children, and it’s this mentality that Animal Collective explore and evoke. It might seem whimsical or silly, but only in the sense that these perceptions are the birthrights of all children, and this band have such facility with their musical environment that they manage to turn something primal into something almost timeless. Rather, grace is wasted on the elegant.
Unlike last year’s impressive Here Comes the Indian, Sung Tongs opts for folky ambience and late-night, summer camp sing-alongs to carry the weight (or weightlessness) of its strains. Campfire Songs, which followed Here Comes the Indian, suggested a similar kind of sprawling, communal minstrel-craft, but without much of Sung Tongs’ flair for soaring melody and delicate, buoyant pace. As it happens, the last third of the new record does return to more of an open-ended, exploratory rote, but there it seems less a part of an endless ballad than the comedown from scenes of a jungle almost too fantastic to imagine. And despite its eclecticism and relatively Dadaist leanings, Sung Tongs is a romantic album; romantic in its celebration of innocence and nonsensical shared knowledge, and the sweet, trusted idea that everything will be fine—as if it hadn’t always been.
Musically, Animal Collective sound more “pop” here than they ever have, which is to say most of the songs have clear melodies that beg to be doubled and tripled by you or anyone else who cares to join. In songs like “Leaf House,” “Winters Love,” and “College,” the duo stake a direct claim to the ideal American folk of the Beach Boys and Simon & Garfunkel, as their harmonies are pure, without suggesting perfection. As Tare and Bear leap over each other in wordless, sparkler-trail counterpoint, I think about the already-gone ambitions of “Cabinessence” and Smiley Smile. However, as Brian Wilson’s visions were damaged symphonies to God, Animal Collective don’t stop down long enough to mire in the dust left behind.
“Who Could Win a Rabbit” revels in a thousand parts of some giant timepiece, as the pair of delirious children slide over screws into a bright green den of gears. The acoustic guitar rings in the start of this race with a fanfare, major chord strum, and just after the chimes cheer in pandemonium, harmony vocals spit out as many syllables as possible to describe who knows what country fair, bread-and-butter game. Sometimes their voices cross, or fly so near each other for long stretches that what seems like intricate polyphony approaches unhinged, acrobatic maneuvering. Above all, a sense of overwhelming happiness at having discovered this strange place abounds.
Elsewhere, the music is more reflective. “The Softest Voice” layers clear-toned guitar figures upon each other, as Tare and Bear whisper in harmony above, as if singing to the vision peering back at them from the skin of a backwoods creek. The rustic, secretive manner of their voices and the barely disturbed forest around them suggests that whatever ghosts inhabit these woods are only too happy to oblige a lullaby or two. Likewise, the epic “Visiting Friends” gathers in faceless, mutated ghosts (i.e., oddly manipulated vocalizations from the duo) to hover over their dying fire in visage of nothing better than the tops of trees. The constant strumming moves alongside the voices, helping to keep them afloat, but never suggesting they should organize themselves into anything recognizable or predictable. It’s windy, and if it rains they’ll get wet and continue to play.
The ritual dance “We Tigers,” passing like a pagan baptism for children in war paint, gives way to a trilogy of almost formless ballads, beginning with the erratic hymn “Mouth Wooed Her.” Here, Animal Collective, no longer satisfied to keep their enthusiasm in check via tribal drums or faintly Brazilian guitar figures, glide through scenes with impressionistic glee. Wordless coos and birdcalls light up the song, and the pair eases into their narrative with wispy, echoed melodies, before running into each other headfirst and pouncing on their guitars like real savages. This is how Sung Tongs communicates; in place of organized chaos, there are chance meetings and reunions, and plenty of celebratory dances and momentary epiphanies. In truth, it may be too much for some people to take, especially if they’re too far removed from this strange environment. For others, it’s a wonderful place, as these guides know only too well.
