Twenty years on, Sung Tongs is still Animal Collective at their most elemental

Label: FatCat Records
Original Release Date: 3 May, 2004

Inspired by classic pop, freak folk and minimal house, Animal Collective’s strange and beautiful second album deserves greater recognition for its sonic experimentation and emotional resonance

Sung Tongs, Animal Collective’s 2004 opus, arrived in the midst of a thrilling era for strange, inventive music. The artists labelled freak folk, including Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, and those documented in David Keenan’s scene-coining 2003 article “New Weird America” for The Wire, introduced a wealth of unexpected influences into the folk gene pool. But none of these psych-folk acts were as unabashed in their love for pop music as Animal Collective. 

The scrappy psychedelia of the group’s earlier records had traces of melodic ebullience, as on Danse Manatee’s Essplode or Ark’s Slippi. And while defined by its slow-motion folk ambience, Campfire Songs is elevated by the beauty of its unfurling vocals. But at the time of release, Sung Tongs was considered by some to be a watered-down version of the band’s sound. In retrospect, it feels like an unveiling of their kaleidoscopic sound, distilled and pin-sharp.

The Brooklyn-based band, hardly precious about maintaining a fixed line-up, was pared back to just two members – Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) and Avey Tare (Dave Portner) – for Sung Tongs. But there was a sharpening of focus in other ways, too. Speaking to Crack Magazine over Zoom, Lennox tells us that Sung Tongs marked a significant shift: “It was less reliant on just the energy of the music,” he explains, stressing the move away from raw emotion into something “more controlled”. 

But to consider it a mature record can feel strange at first blush; there’s carefree warbling throughout Whaddit I Done, a twisted campfire sing-along in Who Could Win a Rabbit and frisky guitar plucks propelling Sweet Road. “We saw it as more of a ritual,” Lennox clarifies, “where music becomes a sacred space to say things you couldn’t say otherwise, to get in touch with a piece of yourself that you’d hide away.” On Leaf House, Lennox grapples with his father’s death, the track’s percussive vocals and steady guitar strums anchoring the melancholy lyrics.

Sung Tongs marked the first time that Lennox contributed full songs to an Animal Collective record. Along with Leaf House, Lennox’s other major contribution is Winters Love, a shimmering portrait of his day to day. He reminisces about taking the bus in Brooklyn, from Red Hook to Prospect Heights; the splendour of wintertime; the burning sensation in his throat from dry-swallowing antidepressants. None of that is explicitly conveyed in the song, but this patchwork of experiences is there in the vocal harmonies’ glorious, downhome transcendence. The inspiration is unexpected: the opening of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, soundtracked by the final movement of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem.

Early in the process, when Sung Tongs was beginning to take shape, the group were trying out music in the style of 2001’s Danse Manatee, placing contact mics on drums to achieve an electroacoustic barrage of noise. “It didn’t feel right,” Lennox says, explaining that there were shows that consequently featured just acoustic guitars and singing. “It was a reaction to having done Manatee and Ark, where there were a lot of instruments… we wanted to do something more stripped down.” 

Live shows are where the majority of Animal Collective’s songs are workshopped: We Tigers, for example, was more raucous early on. When they went to Colorado to record the album, the surrounding farmland encouraged them to produce tamer versions. Audio engineer Rusty Santos had helped with Animal Collective’s live shows and was more familiar with recording software than either Lennox or Portner, which was important for an album filled with overdubs and rich arrangements. “We wanted to make music with guitars but have it sound electronic,” Lennox says. 

Tellingly, around this time Lennox and Portner were both into European producers Gas and Dettinger, and the Kompakt label. “I would fall asleep to one or two of the Pop Ambient compilations every night,” Lennox tells us; the 2003 edition is his favourite. The swirling, hypnotic reveries in that CD’s Alltag 5 and Sun(Rise) tracks illustrate what the group strives for on Visiting Friends, Sung Tong’s 13-minute centrepiece, where the guitars become pure texture as synths and vocals fizz underneath. Good Lovin Outside conjures a serene atmosphere by using guitar strums as a source of pretty, sustained ambience.

Twenty years on, it’s clear that Sung Tongs is Animal Collective at their most elemental. The Softest Voice finds grace in every twirling vocal melody and fingerpicked guitar note. Mouth Wooed Her weaves an elegant tapestry out of spare vocal sputters, electronic spurts and handclaps. College distils the group’s love for the Beach Boys into 53 seconds. It’s precisely this immediacy and unpretentiousness that enabled the album to connect with audiences – and still resonate today. Lennox remembers how he was startled by their show attendance numbers after Sung Tongs. It was the first inkling that their vision was being accepted by their growing fanbase. “My whole life changed after that,” he says.