Anyone ever stumble across Struwwelpeter, the 19th century German children's book by Heinrich Hoffmann? Mark Twain himself translated it to English, although I doubt it made it to the bedside of too many American kids. This illustrated book is comprised of short lyrics describing the horrific things that happen to naughty children: Cruel Frederick is attacked by his own maltreated dog; Pauline plays with matches and burns to death while her cats watch; Conrad the thumbsucker winds up with his thumbs cut off by the red-legged scissor-man. I don't need to go on. There's something so downright un-American about the whole grisly affair, something alien about the gleeful proximity of children to violence and mutilation. Fortunately, I was a college German student when I encountered Struwwelpeter, and it freaked me out even then. Yet Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, the incredible but bizarre release by Avey Tare and Panda Bear brings the fates of those luckless kraut kinder back to mind.
The marriage of psychedelia and fairy-tale imagery goes back at least to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"; Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the Dead's Aoxomoxoa: the first flowering of psychedelia was joyously regressive, celebrating juvenilia as the antidote to modern rationality. Yet what was indelibly excised was menace-- what the gnomes and newspaper taxis conceal. Remember the boat ride through the tunnel in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? In the middle of this sucrose wonderland, there's something fucking awful.
Don't choke on the references. Forget them. Avey Tare and Panda Bear's Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished is a masterful piece of electro-acoustic fairy-tale music; yet its squealing electronics, and vitrified rhythms suggest something darker. Like a Snickers bar with a razorblade in it.
Spirit They're Gone is Avey Tare's album; he sings, and plays guitars, pianos, and electronics. Panda Bear, meanwhile, mans the crumpled percussion. The album opens with the high-frequency squall and delicate vocals of "Spirit They've Vanished," offering little clue about future directions. However, the second track, "April and the Phantom" is crystallizing: expert acoustic guitars, fierce drumming and Daltrey-esque screams resemble the Who resurrected as the seventh member of the Elephant 6. Tinkling toy pianos, organs and exclamations of digital noise round out the track, while Tare perilously insists, "She ran out of nature," again and again.
The wistful "Penny Dreadfuls" lays simple piano over needled electronics reminiscent of Pita or Christian Fennesz in a kind of lysergic dirge on the end of childhood. "Chocolate Girl" is dubbed-out calliope music, swirling and swirling: a strange meditation seemingly on sexual awakening, awkward but erotic in the midst of an enchanted forest of an album. The interstellar Nintendo drone of "Everyone Whistling" is irresistible space-pop, backed by some incredibly nimble jazz drumming. The twelve-minute "Alvin Row" is an epic closer, emerging from free-noise clatter, insect electronics and demented piano into sunny Beatlesque psych-pop. "Can you hear me, troubadour?" Tare asks before the eruption of furious ivories. Schlock horror organs abound and the cymbals crash like storms. The album collapses into the crackly sample of a child (Alfalfa from the Little Rascals?) saying, "My singing voice is gone... My singing voice is gone... My singing voice is gone..."
Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished is not only outstanding, but one of the most original sounding albums out there. This record, as I've said, marries the pleasant and the violent and is not for timid ears: the sparkling pop never strays far from the lacerating noise. The lyrics are largely indecipherable but occasional gems and wonderful turns of phrase emerge from the bright din. Two mysterious fellow travelers (one-half of the four-man Animal collective) seem to have stumbled upon each other and created something truly beautiful. The only question is: which one of them is the walrus?
