A music magazine recently did a profile of Luke Haines, former member of the briefly essential 90s indie mavens The Auteurs and author of the caustically hilarious biography of the experience, Bad Vibes.
It reported that nowadays Haines is at the very margins of the industry, recording albums about abandoned nuclear shelters which would baffle most, but finishes by squaring this uber circle of artistic freedom with his need to still earn a living, emphasising the point with the stark last comment, ‘this is not a hobby’.
Haines and artists like him are getting fewer and farther between as the economics of the game become that of subsistence; Baltimoreans Animal Collective have the luxury of being able to call on 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion – a Top 20 album at home – as proof to record company execs that they can throw out a tune, but before that and since then they’ve been a far more esoteric proposition.
Tangerine Reef was given birth conceptually after an hour long concert the trio – the obtusely named Avey Tare, Deakin and Geologist – performed entitled Coral Orgy In Florida which they helpfully explained had been inspired by, ‘the sexual reproduction of corals’. They had so much fun with it they decided, as you do, to turn the idea into an audio-visual project that when presented forms, ‘a visual tone poem consisting of time-lapse and slow pans across surreal aquascapes of naturally fluorescent coral and cameos by alien-like reef creatures’.
It’s a description which tells you that this package isn’t so much about recreation as about being absorbed, an ability to beckon listeners which AC have long used to lure people into a world which has often lacked shape or an obvious purpose.
Tangerine Reef doesn’t start, or really end, but instead sees them meld their abstractions into a singular piece of never-less-than-interesting signatures. You might find it best not to hold onto conceptions – the mazy flow and psychedelic winsomeness of Inspector Gadget, and Hip Sponge’s chanted, off kilter waxing are as hard to describe as they are to take in at first – but gradually aural images do appear, coalescing through the imagination rather than as a direct response to the often juxtaposed sounds.
Occasionally frustrating, Tangerine Reef is also sometimes jaw-droppingly lovely, the little nooks of Buxom underlining the fact that, should they ever wish to, the threesome have a five-star pop album in them, whilst closer Best Of Times (Worst Of All) meanders to a spiritual conclusion, frequencies looping in and out like sun-rays cutting through the water.
The problem is an obvious one: that hearing Tangerine Reef is only one half of the intended thrill, that to gain an understanding of its intricacies and relevance it really needs to be visually digested at source as well, live in an art space where the possibility of shutting out the rest of the world could be like a personal flotation tank. For Animal Collective, challenging their audience has become their status quo regardless of the risks of ostracising them.
This is a record which confirms them as artists and conductors, a serious business and one which could in now way be taken as just a hobby.
