I bet you’d get a little thrill in late ’60s London each time you got the chance to tell a friend that, actually, there isn’t any hurdy-gurdy to be heard on “Hurdy Gurdy Man.” That psychedelic wash of overtone-rich sound that ripples through the chorus of Donovan’s 1968 hit? That’s a tanpura, a long-necked cousin of the sitar! There’s nothing wrong with a little playful misdirection—Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie On Reggae Woman” offers neither boogie nor reggae, and 20 Jazz Funk Greats famously steers clear of anything resembling jazz or funk. But still: Shouldn’t a slyly sinister song about a mysterious “Hurdy Gurdy Man” who visits you in your dreams give a taste of the esoteric, 1,000-year-old instrument in his name?
Then again, if you’ve encountered this odd, pear-shaped instrument once associated with peasants and blind beggars before being embraced in the royal court during the reign of Louis XIV, then you’d hear the sound it actually emits—a high, wailing drone not unlike a bagpipe—and you’ll understand why pop-minded artists haven’t exactly embraced it. Fortunately, Geologist, née Brian Weitz, is not a pop-minded artist. If each Animal Collective album exists somewhere on a spectrum between honeyed psych-pop melodies and brain-melting abstraction, Geologist’s contributions clearly fortify the latter impulse. Present on each album since 2005’s Feels, he has often been credited with samplers and electronics and has always avoided the spotlight; his habit of wearing a headlamp during concerts perfectly epitomizes his studious, workmanlike role in the band.
Until now, Geologist was also the only Animal Collective member without a proper solo album to his name. That changes with Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?, an odd, pleasingly unclassifiable instrumental record that was inspired, bizarrely enough, by a hurdy-gurdy performance he saw Keiji Haino play 28 years ago. Geologist reimagines the instrument as a vehicle for psychedelic expansion on an album that sounds like one of those medieval troubadours got hopped up on mead and discovered spiritual jazz 600 years early.
As a demonstration of the hurdy-gurdy’s tonal range, Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights? is pretty persuasive. Geologist was first drawn to the instrument, apparently, because he lacked guitar skills and found the hurdy-gurdy brought him closer to the sounds he sought to emulate. So, on the clattering, siren-like “Tonic,” he shows how the instrument can mimic a guitar solo’s distorted wail. On the keening “Not Trad,” he lets it ring out like bagpipes, though a dark, droning outro complicates the track’s parade-procession spirit. And on the nine-minute “Compact Mirror/Last Names,” which flows through textures and ideas like some ambient-funk tributary—and features bandmate Avey Tare on bass—he stretches it out like a bleating, distressed shofar.
“RV Envy” goes full jazz-funk freakout, with mangled synths that honk like angry geese and a hurdy-gurdy tone as distorted and charred as Miles Davis’s trumpet circa 1972. But even with these variations, the gurgling, droning tone of the instrument does grow somewhat tiresome after 10 songs; “Pumpkin Festival,” in particular, feels like a grating restating of what has come before. We get a welcome respite in the form of “Government Job,” as Geologist recedes from the spotlight and lets guest guitarist Merrick Weitz (his son) and drummer Emma Garau forge a psychedelic groove ornamented with a woozy, four-note synth motif.
As outré as Camel Lights gets, the presence of such treasured guests and ideas apparently rattling around Geologist’s brain for 28 years conveys the sense that this is a genuinely personal work—not a one-off novelty. It’s strange, I guess, for a musician associated with samplers and synthesizers to embrace an instrument older than the mechanical printing press, but Geologist has long claimed interest in, above all, unconventional textures and “abstract sounds.” You can make such sounds happen with tools both electronic and antique.
My own appreciation for Camel Lights increased after I saw a video of Geologist performing songs from it at a small festival in D.C. There is none of the multisensory spectacle of an Animal Collective concert. Geologist stands on a small stage and humbly cranks the wheel of the bizarre-shaped instrument with care and skill, yielding uncommon sounds from an unlikely device; he even forgoes his customary headlamp. He looks, in other words, like the real Hurdy Gurdy Man.
