Sung Tongs

Wow! Not much music like this around. This is to folk what the Flaming Lips is to, err, Rock. Completely tripped-out but completely accessible, it is acoustic music pushed to its literal extreme, a modern day 'Pipers at the Gates of Dawn'. Underscored by often tribal rhythms, the Collective mix extraordinary vocal harmonies with playful electronics to create richly orchestrated songs that paradoxically retain a campfire spontaneity whilst being unbelievably well crafted. 'Leaf House' opens the album with spectacular vocal harmonies and a pulsing rhythm, two minutes of madness unrivalled on any record this year. 'The Softest Voice' is haunting spectral folk that shows they can play it straight, a kind of acid comedown from the hyperactive rushes of opening two songs. 'Winters Love' builds from a hushed piece of acoustica not dissimilar from some Four Tet and bursts into a new frenetic tempo, building layers of melody until it reaches an impossibly infectious loop of pastoral glory. 'Kids on Holiday' is a demented trip of distorted, dubby bubbliness which is saturated with childish anticipation and peaks with yells of 'Holidays!' and is much better than I can possibly describe. There are lots of other highlights too numerous to discuss, including the animal stomp of 'We Tigers' and the mind-boggling 'Good Lovin Outside', and there are only two let-downs, the over-long Visiting Friends and the weak last track 'Whattit I done', but nothing detracts this from being possibly the only 5 star album this year.

Each album serves a purpose. Some have been made to come to terms with experiences and feelings, others are made especially for you (the listener), are meant to teach you something, show you something, make you dance, think or initiate you into something. People seem to suggest that Animal Collective (basically the duo of Avey Tare and Panda Bear) is out there to teach you how to use your imagination, as their music offers so little to hold on to that you're required to fill in the gaps yourself. Those who enjoyed it a lot (a large group of people, as it topped many end of year-lists) even went as far as to compare it to a kind of religious experience, or a way to live through a state of childish euphoria a second time, with "childish" not standing for immature/juvenile, but pure/direct/free from any limitations. I can't deny that they actually accomplished this feat - the album does sound like the product of boundless imagination, with its pseudo-spontaneous songs, group therapy chants and tribal ambiance, but that's exactly what bugs me about the whole shebang. There have always been artists around that propagated a kind of back to basics/nature/purity-aesthetic, which always seems a silly way of escapism to me. But hey, I never said I was indifferent to the pitfalls of our cultural discourse. Now, as to how they took it to practise: by creating a bunch of "tongs," which are "about returning to an old house, doing nothing with friends or making sounds with bones": simple and pure fun. Right. It starts off very promising, though, with the drunken stupor of "Leaf House," a kind of campfire symphony with sparse instrumentation (guitar, percussion) and - most importantly - layers of dazzlingly arranged, harmonizing vocals that even recall the Beach Boys' vocal gymnastics. It's almost a sheer cacophony, but somehow the song managed to invoke a dream-like atmosphere that constantly walks the thin line between randomness and direction. The brief slice of ecstasy "Who Could Win a Rabbit" is even better, as folk instrumentation, tape manipulation and random sounds are combined and turned into one hell of a mess that almost succeeds in taking you into another mindset. Sadly enough, this is where excitement comes to a halt, as the remainder of the album seems to have been intended as a long string of free-floating pieces that try to reconcile elements from psychedelic music (manipulations, eerie vocal melodies), folk and experimental music. The contemplative "The Softest Voice" may evoke unreal rituals and barren landscapes, the childish vocals in the second half of "Winters Love" might crack you up, just like "Kids on Holiday" (Syd Barrett goes to the jungle), but from that point onwards the album descends into a long-winded mess that just relies too much on its own idiosyncratic tricks, twist and turns (which is reminiscent of the way in which CocoRosie's self-absorption made 'em deliver not enough memorable substance). "Visiting Friends" is a twelve-minute bore, "We Tigers" suggests what a collaboration of Rhythm of the Saints-era Paul Simon with The Butthole Surfers might sound like (it's HORRIBLE), while the final few (s)(t)ongs of the album have the storage life of a fart, and God knows I really, really tried to give 'm a second chance. And a third and fourth. Sung Tongs managed to do what very few albums have been capable of before: grabbing my attention with the opening attack and gradually raising the annoyance level to a dangerous high. Perhaps I'm flushing my indie cred down the drain with statements like this (or maybe it's just that I don't have the imagination that's required to absorb this album and help me create my own little universe of purity and happiness), but boy, Sung Tongs isn't a very good album, or is it?

Similar to the reviewer previous, i caught this band live with Mum and was mightily confused... An array of almost Taliking Heads rythmics, early Mercury Rev madness, primal shouting and Tyrannasaurus Rex flambouyance but still all over the place yet exceptionally controlled in their song structures...

The record lived up to everything you see live. Initially it confuses and has a minor tendancy to trundel off down into teenage acidland territory but after a few listens becomes an obsessive listen. Join the daily habit folks, this truly is a little orange flavoured little peach that makes you want to swing from the handrails on the underground and shout in glee.