“Sung Tongs” by Animal Collective
After spending most of the summer running into the brick walls of writer's block, I texted a childhood friend around 1 a.m. for a weird album. Their response: Sung Tongs by Animal Collective, an album which simultaneously sated my request and challenged my previous thoughts on the group.
Animal Collective is like no other band I’ve ever listened to. They are resourceful, extremely unconventional, and otherwise, well, plain weird. The eighth track on the album, “College,” is nearly a minute of the band harmonizing to the sound of what seems like a paste being squeezed out of a tube, ending with the line, “You don’t have to go to college.” The rest of the album is a carnivalesque parade of tracks.
As far as concrete lyrics go, “College” is as good as it gets. Songs like “Leaf House” seem as if they were written by pulling lyrics out of a fishbowl, “This house is sad / Because he’s not / Tidy // Good dogs go by / When someone comes / To go gone, gone, gone,” (Leaf House) and the song ends with the entire band meowing. In many cases, they’ll double songs up to one track, like with “Mouth Wooed Her” (pronounced mouth water), which begins with the band making bird calls to the random strumming of guitars. Then they sing a tangential string of lyrics, “ You're so good and natural / Arms appeal / 'Cause you're so close / Close to I-I-I / And eyeing my face …” At each bolded line, the band would quickly pick up the tempo and almost yell the lyrics. The second song, like the first, keeps up the constant semi-consistent guitar strumming accompanied by the repeated line, “I need mouth water.”
Ultimately, what fascinates me the most with Sung Tongs is how unconcerned it is with passing on a coherent thought. As “Panda Bear” (stage name for multi-instrumentalist and co-founder Noah Lennox) said in a 2009 interview with Glenn O’Brien from Telekom Electronic Beats, “Musically, it was not about making decisions based on knowledge or reason. We wanted to work with music on an emotional level, not an intellectual level. That’s where it comes from.” Many tracks like “Visiting Friends” and “Winters Love” truly capture this statement, containing lyrics that are meant to serve as a vehicle for singing. Furthermore, much of the album seems like an attempt to confuse those who are digging too deep.
Looking back, it makes sense why my initial reaction to this album, at about 3:30 a.m. that night, was that “it felt alive.” And while I still hold that belief quite firmly, I should still probably elaborate. It’s an album that came in contrast with most of my artistic experience, where the artist would be communicating a message or idea. Instead, Animal Collective is wholly concerned with just being human. I wouldn’t say anyone needs to listen to this album, but, if you find yourself fed up with bullshit (which many of us already are) and you need a break from reality, then I’d recommend giving it a listen.
Richard Shapiro