The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
6 — Wednesday, April 21, 2021 

When you think of the word indie, 

what typically comes to mind? Is it 
a youthful aesthetic? Is it a culture 
defined by being ahead of the curve? Or 
is it maybe just a new sound? Whatever 
the interpretation is, it’s hard to argue 
that Animal Collective doesn’t embody 
it in some way.

Yes, I know. An artist retrospective 

on Animal Collective? How original. 
However, when people talk about the 
band’s absurd run of albums in the 
2000s, they tend to leave out some 
crucial records in their early years as 
well as smaller side projects. Hopefully, 
this will help shine some light on some 
of the more under-appreciated records. 
Regardless, the level of impact the band 
has had on both its contemporaries 
within the indie genre, as well as what 
the genre would become because of 
their influence, is undeniable.

By looking back through their 

discography, we can see the way 
Animal 
Collective 
constantly 

evolved their sound and forged an 
uncomparable identity not only within 
their niche, but the musical landscape 
as a whole. Of course, this article won’t 
be covering every project from the 
group, but it will cover most of it. Let’s 
begin.

Spirit 
They’re 
Gone, 
Spirit 

They’ve Vanished — Everything 
Animal Collective can be traced 
back to Baltimore, Md., where all 
four members — Dave Portner (Avey 
Tare), Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), 
Brian Weitz (Geologist) and Josh 
Dibb (Deakin) — grew up and met as 
teenagers. Once off at college, they 
would congregate every summer 
to make music. Around this time, 
Portner was already in the middle 
of writing a record. He then asked 
Lennox to participate in the recording 
process. Thus, Spirit They’re Gone, 
Spirit They’ve Vanished was released 
in August 2000.

In every regard, this album is a 

miracle. Nothing at the time sounded 
remotely like it, and to this day, few 

records can compare. Portner and 
Lennox tap into a side of the juvenile 
experience that rarely gets explored. 
The instrumentation can turn from 
sporadic folky acoustics to harsh 
unabashed noise in an instant. At the 
same time, they managed to craft long 
complex songs that demonstrate an 
affinity for experimental compositions 
far beyond their years. Tracks like 
“Penny Dreadfuls” and “Alvin Row” 
are perfect examples of this ability.

What really sets this record apart 

from anything else at the time is that 
it never once feels like it’s trying to 
be experimental. It’s just the music 
Portner and Lennox wanted to make. I 
would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 
track “Untitled,” which might be one 
of the most powerful songs Animal 
Collective has ever made. It could just 
have easily been titled “Staring Into 
the Face of God.” If you ever need to 
prove to someone that noise can be 
beautiful, this is all you need.

Danse Manatee — At this point, 

the band was hitting a creative 
flow. They began discovering the 
experimental branch of music and 
fell in love. Around this time, they 
met with and became friends with 
experimental noise group Black 
Dice (a band that probably deserves 
a retrospective in their own right). 
While having included harsh textures 
to some degree on their prior project, 
this introduction opened their eyes to 
not only the limitless possibilities of 
noise but the different types of noise 
that can be implemented. With these 
interests in mind, Portner and Lennox 
brought along Weitz to work on their 
next album, Danse Manatee, released 
in July 2001.

This album often gets overlooked 

in comparison to the enormity of the 
band’s full catalog, mostly because it 
is seen as more of a transitional work 
for them. In some ways, this is true. 
The trio definitely experimented more 
on this project. There are very few 
tracks, if any, that contain any sort of 
familiar song structure, or a structure 
at all for that matter. And yet, it never 
feels as though the album loses focus 
or purpose.

Everything flows in a very organic 

way, despite the sound being more 
synthetic than anything they had 
done up to that point. However, the 
most impressive part is how the band 
utilizes noise. Spirit They’re Gone is 
loud, but Danse Manatee is noisier. The 
band uses quiet, high-pitch frequency 
as a background for the music they put 
in front of it. This creates the sensation 
of something itching at the back of 
your brain. It’s infectious in that way.

Campfire Songs — Not long after 

Danse Manatee was released, the band 
started working on material again. 
They had been enticed for years by 
the idea of creating something warm 
and inviting. Naturally, this pushed 
them toward an acoustic sound, and 
their next release Campfire Songs 
certainly embraces it. With five tracks, 
two over ten minutes long, Campfire 
Songs captures Animal Collective 
at their most hypnotic and ambient. 
The band piles several layers of guitar 
chords strumming on top of each 
other to create a full psychotomimetic 
soundscape, a technique they would 
use many times in the future.

This is one of those LPs where the 

music and the title work in harmony. 
Campfire 
Songs 
feels 
like 
the 

apotheosis of all late summer evenings 
around a fire with friends. There is a 
comfortable atmosphere established by 
the repetitiveness of the strumming but 
also a sense of adventure in the way the 
music glides smoothly along. Each song 
transitions perfectly so that the tracks 
are seamless and indistinguishable 
without checking to see if the title 
has changed. The album is one whole 
experience that really doesn’t get 
enough praise. It should be noted that — 
although they weren’t improvised — all 
five tracks were recorded in one take on 
a porch. How aesthetically perfect.

Ark — Technically, this is the 

first official Animal Collective LP. 
Everything before was retroactively 
included by both the fans and the 
band themselves. Originally titled 
Here Comes The Indian, the project 
released in 2003 was later renamed 
Ark due to the disrespectful nature of 
the initial name.

In many ways, this project feels like 

the evolved form of Danse Manatee. It 
contains many of the same experiments 
with noise; this time, everything is 
mixed so that this experimentation is 
front and center. The band comes closer 
to traditional song structure than ever 
before (which isn’t saying much). They 
play with a tight intensity that feels in 
your face but they do not lose complete 
sight of the psychedelic and hypnotic 
atmospheres they worked with on 
Campfire Songs.

The track “Infant Dressing Table” 

is a delicate sound representation of 
infancy that builds slowly until all the 
different textures coalesce into one 
sound. It balances chaos and beauty 
in a way that should not work as well 
as it does. Ark as a whole feels like 
a summation of what the band has 
worked on before, but with slightly 
more refinement.

Sung Tongs — For fans, Animal 

Collective has a golden era in their 
career, and most would agree that 
this is where it begins. After the 
dense collages of Ark, the band felt it 
necessary to strip things back. And 
if they’ve learned anything, it’s hard 
to get much more stripped back than 
acoustic. Thus, Sung Tongs was born. 
But to expect this to be similar to 

Campfire Songs would be a mistake. 
They tighten up their focus even 
more, emphasizing as much organic 
instrumentation as possible. The result 
ends up sounding halfway between 
alien folk songs and indie Captain 
Beefheart. Percussion becomes an 
important element of the record as 
a way to accentuate the complex 
rhythms introduced throughout.

The percussive feel of the LP even 

finds its way into the guitar-playing, 
with sharp strumming carving 
out rhythms of their own. It’s the 
perfect music to try and fail to dance 
to. Somehow, they manage to sound 
even more playful than usual while 
also achieving some of their most 
meditative works to date.

This is the album where Animal 

Collective 
establishes 
that 
they 

are 
very 
much 
accomplished 

songwriters. Each track has more of a 
thematic presence. “Kids on Holiday” 
depicts the conflict of trying to make 
the most of constant travel despite 
its depressing monotony. “Visiting 
Friends,” perhaps the track most 
similar to Campfire Songs, presents 
a wordless long-form expression of 
the beauty of being with new friends 
as well as the anxiety of hanging out 
with people you still don’t know too 

well. “College” is less than a minute 
long and consists of Lennox and 
Portner layering vocal harmonies on 
top of each other in a way that sounds 
similar to what Robin Pecknold 
would do years later. The song has 
only one line: “You don’t have to go 
to college.” Sung Tongs truly is a 
triumphant moment for the band as 
well as an indicator to everyone of 
how unrestricted their creativity was 
then.

Prospect Hummer — After Sung 

Tongs, Animal Collective had the 
attention of nearly every music critic 
under the sun. While they were 
touring in the United Kingdom, they 
happened to meet legendary folk artist 
Vashti Bunyan. This meeting seemed 
to have been fruitful because the band 
immediately started reworking some 
unreleased cuts off Sung Tongs for 
Bunyan to sing on. The final product 
would be the Prospect Hummer EP, 
released in early 2005.

Thinking about the sound Bunyan 

was known for and the sound Animal 
Collective was working with at the 
time, it is absurd how well this EP 
turned out. .

Film director Spike Lee and jazz 

trumpeter Terence Blanchard have 
been working together for 30 years. 
Lee makes the films; Blanchard 
makes the music. “We’ve developed 
a shorthand,” Lee explained in a 
virtual panel discussion last week. 
“A mental telepathy terminology.” It 
seems the two have nailed down a 
process of collaboration, one that some 
in the film industry might consider 
unconventional.

Typically, a composer writes the 

score after the film is shot and edited. 
Lee and Blanchard operate differently. 
“Terence gets the script at the same 
time as the actors get the script,” Lee 
said. He added, “It’s a great disrespect to 
the composer to be the last one hired.”

Using this system, Blanchard 

has composed the score for many of 
Lee’s joints — “Malcom X” (1992), 
“Black KkKlansman” (2018) and 
most recently “Da 5 Bloods” (2020), 
which earned Blanchard an Oscar 
nomination for Best Original Score.

In Lee’s films, composition happens 

as the movie is being made, without 
Blanchard on set. This is where 
the telepathy kicks in. Throughout 
the production process, Lee sends 
Blanchard the script, stills and clips 
of the film in progress. This keeps 
Blanchard in the loop — he’s gotten 
into the habit of making the stills the 
screensaver to his computer so that 
the film is a part of his daily life. This 
way, by the time the film is complete, 
Blanchard is already engrossed in it; he 
can already see it, feel it, even smell it.

On Wednesday, both Lee and 

Blanchard virtually addressed the 
University of Michigan as part of the 
centennial celebration of the School 
of Social Work. In a panel discussion, 
Lee and Blanchard were joined by 
Daphne Watkins and Robin Means 
Coleman. Dr. Watkins is a professor at 
the University’s Social of Social Work 
and Dr. Coleman is film producer and 
professor of communications (among 
other titles) at Northwestern University. 
 

Due to some unfortunate and 

unexplained technical difficulties, the 
program began 30 minutes behind 
schedule. While approximately 1,400 
viewers were waiting at the scheduled 
start time, only 700 stuck it out for the 
show and just 471 lasted to the end. 
This didn’t stop the duo from bringing 
playful energy; later on, during some 

brief audio issues with a student 
question, Lee cracked, “You gotta get 
someone from Ohio State to do the —,” 
intentionally pausing to make a joking 
commentary on the audio situation. 
The panel roared.

Lee spoke to his virtual audience 

live from the headquarters of his film 
company, Forty Acres and a Mule 
Filmworks, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He sat 
in a fabulous high-backed chair I 
would’ve described as maroon and 
silky, but that he made sure to classify 
as “purple crushed velvet.” His voice 
sounded echoey, like he was speaking 
in a large room; I sensed the grandeur 
of high ceilings and wide-open studios.

Behind him was a portrait of Billie 

Holiday, Duke Ellington and Fats 
Waller. “This is like a museum,” Lee 
commented, wide-eyed, on the space. 
“This building is a testament to our 
Black artistry.”

The space is filled with the presence 

of greats, mainly in the form of honorific 
portraits. “I’m looking at Denzel right 
now!” Spike cried. “Harry Belafonte is 
downstairs.” On another wall, there’s 
an African National Congress flag 
signed by Nelson Mandela and Winnie 
Madikizela-Mandela during Apartheid. 
Lee repeated this last part for emphasis: 
“During Apartheid!” He leaned back in 
his velvet chair with awe. “Every day I 
come to the office, I see that!”

Throughout the panel discussion, 

Lee and Blanchard stressed the 
importance of honoring the stories of 
people who have come before.

“There was some great shit done 

before you were born,” Lee said. Lee, 
who also works as a professor and 
artistic director of the Graduate Film 
Program at New York University’s 
Tisch School of the Arts, tells his 
students this all the time. To him, 
young creators can only benefit 
from doing their homework on their 
predecessors, “whose shoulders you 
could be hoisted from, if you know who 
they are!”

A set of shoulders like those is 

especially important for creatives who 
come from marginalized backgrounds. 
Blanchard remarked, “You know how 
frustrating it is to teach kids who have 
talent and have interests in a whole lot 
of areas? And then the reality of it is, 
you don’t want to tell them how tough 
it’s going to be to make a career in this 
business, not based on your talent, but 
just on who you are.”

Preaching to posterity: Spike 

Lee and Terence Blanchard give 

change-maker lecture

Artist Retrospective: Animal Collective’s domination of 2000s indie

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

GIGI GUIDA

Daily Arts Writer

DREW GADBOIS

Daily Arts Writer

Design by Caitlin Martens

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By Matt Skoczen
©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/21/21

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

04/21/21

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, April 21, 2021

ACROSS

1 Formal ties
7 Corp. homes

10 Govt. farming 

monitor

14 Symphony type 

pioneered by 
Beethoven

15 Agreement that 

sounds like fun?

16 Clogging is one 

of its two st. 
dances

17 *Lamb Chop, e.g.
19 Laura with an 

Oscar

20 Holiday aide
21 Back
22 Decisiveness
24 Hunk
26 DJIA listings
29 Candy cup creator
31 *Start a number
35 Forbes 

competitor

36 Legal 

encumbrance

37 Holiday drink
38 Lions and tigers 

and ... not bears

42 Swap with, as 

in a player-for-
player deal

44 Busy-bee link
45 “Très __”
47 GPS info
48 *Sheriff Woody’s 

sidekick

52 “Silas Marner” 

child

53 Plaza de toros cry
54 Lily pad squatter
57 Sap
59 Erode, with 

“away”

62 Team’s lack, in a 

cliché

63 Scot’s swimming 

spot

64 *Spoken 

language, in 
semiotics

68 Tennis great who 

wrote “Days of 
Grace”

69 First lady not 

married to a 
president?

70 1996 slasher film
71 “To __ not ... ”
72 Lunch bread
73 Pasta unit

DOWN

1 Workout 

aftermath

2 Word of intent

3 Chitchat
4 O’Hare, on tix
5 Chorizo snack
6 Belt
7 Word with hip or 

bunny

8 Hernando’s 

“Huh?”

9 Has a capacity 

of, as a diner

10 Briefs
11 33-Down start, 

usually

12 Wouldn’t dream 

of it

13 Valiant’s son
18 Indented 

blemish

23 Rotate so the 

palm faces 
down or 
backward

25 __-a-brac
27 Kind of lamp
28 Tizzy
30 French Toaster 

Sticks brand

32 Provides with the 

means

33 Intermission 

follower, 
perhaps

34 Towel material
38 Ruth on a 

diamond

39 “Sure, probably”

40 Andalusian 

vegetable soup 
served cold

41 Bell-shaped lily
43 Ignoring, with “to”
46 Org. with Jets 

and Flyers

49 Instrument laid 

flat during play

50 Many a 

freshman

51 Like 70-Across
55 “Paper Moon” 

Oscar winner

56 Tot’s sassy 

demand ... or a 
hint to the start 
of the answers to 
starred clues

58 River of Flanders
60 YWCA part: Abbr.
61 1997 Mattel 

acquisition

63 Chem class part
65 Climbing 

greenery

66 “Wow!”
67 Sellout letters

SUDOKU

8
2

9

1

7
5

1
8

2

1
3

6

8

9
8

7
4

2

8

3
5

8
6

9
2

6
1

4
3

2

4

9

5
9

6
1


“My Fair Lady!”
“Are we part of 
the family?”

04/14/21

or 

d 

ill 

reen

p

d 

WHISPER

