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