Animal Collective's Dave Portner told us in a recent interview that Down There, his first solo album as Avey Tare, grew out of a negative emotional atmosphere: "[The record] primarily comes from being bummed out-- which, I felt like in the past two years, I've had a darker time". And indeed, in terms of both general mood and sound, Down There is among the darkest pieces of music to emerge from a member of Animal Collective. The images of the crocodile on the album's cover and in promotional photos hint at the swampy vibe, but the animal association could be extended further: You can almost see Portner's head barely above water, not exactly drowning but having a hard time holding on regardless.
Produced by fellow A.C. member Josh Dibb, the marshland sonics of Down There feel related to the smeared, strung-out electric confusion of Animal Collective's 2005 album, Feels. But to think too much about the past would be to ignore the album's distinct rhythmic tics. While Animal Collective's 2009 breakthrough LP, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was notable for its big, buzzy beats, here the pulse is more introverted and irregular. So we get the clicking dub of "Ghost of Books" and the Warp-like IDM textures of "Heads Hammock". The clatter of "Lucky 1" is panicked and freaked-out, while the straightforward pulse of "Oliver Twist" smacks distantly like the remnants of a pounding headache. The rhythms are prominent, but they don't exactly seem designed for dancing.
Down There is less accessible than latter-day Animal Collective and harder to wrap your head around, but it isn't a callback to the more difficult sound that marked the band early on. If anything, it sounds like Portner is taking a lateral step away from Animal Collective in order to work out some pressing personal issues on his own. This sense of retreat, coupled with the internally focused, claustrophobic atmosphere, brings to mind the thematic concerns (if certainly not the sound) of Neil Young's 1974 bummed-out classic On the Beach. But unlike Neil, Portner doesn't seem angry at the outside world. He's asking questions of himself, and it seems he's doing so without expecting any easy answers. "Shouldn't I be content with what I got?" he muses in "Oliver Twist", later wondering if "I'm just a thief."
Down There opener "Laughing Hieroglyphic" finds Portner touching on notions of protection and kinship, ideas common to the work of his bandmate Panda Bear's solo work. But here, there's less hope and more personal questioning: "When I get fucked up/ I do the best/ To make myself not fucked up again/ My heart and my lungs do/ Why can't I do the same for everyone I love too?" Malaise overcomes Portner in "Heads Hammock", as the phrase "I don't want to" goes unfinished, swallowed up by echoed gurgles. "Heather in the Hospital", which addresses his sister's bout with cancer, ditches internal narrative almost entirely, using emergency room imagery ("The people bandaged up/ The doctor's making rounds") as emotional armor from that beatific, bluesy shout that runs through the song. The music and lyrics here are cut from the same downcast cloth.
Portner has said that he has no plans to perform this material live, hinting that the feeling of the music isn't something that he wants to revisit every night on tour. And it's true that Down There embodies a mindset that most people are trying to get away from. But there's a fantastical bent to the album that opens up with repeated listening, the dripping, moist "weird hell" vibe that Portner's mentioned in several interviews since. The album's theme of the underworld reveals itself in the beginning of the stately instrumental "Glass Bottom Boat", where one warped voice asks another, "Hey, do you know how to get to that cemetery?" and receives the reply, "Sure, I can get you there. Just step into my boat here." The exchange brings to mind Charon, the Greek mythological figure that ferried souls across the rivers Styx and Acheron and into the deeper recesses of Hades. Portner's on that same boat later on during Down There's standout "Cemeteries", his voice reverberating off the reflecting pool of the hushed production: "Looking back on/ Old days". Throughout the record, the vogue for nostalgia that permeates so much modern indie gets inverted. Sometimes, this record says, the past is better left behind.
