Melting of the Minds

With the newly rediscovered voice of Vashti Bunyan colliding with the manic energy of the Animal Collective, I suspected an immediate and fantastic journey through juvenalia. Much to my suprise (and liking), Prospect Hummer turns out to be vastly different. It's a mature, focused effort that uses the group's voices to their greatest possibility. Bunyan has always sounded like a pixie, and on this record, her timeless voice wisps and curves carefully around Avey Tare and Panda Bear's wordless pronouncements. Like Sung Tongs the instrumentation is mostly acoustic and arranged carefully and cleanly.

The first track, "It's You", does what the Collective do best. Waves of voices ebb and flow like water against a soundtrack of rain guitars. Vashti Bunyan's voice sounds well-rested and young like the Collective's, but retains her uncanny sense of otherworldly experience. The song eases into the title track, "Prospect Hummer", a lengthier and more orchestrated affair sounding strangely like Cornelius' "Point" at first. The song moves from a deep-green forest jam to melancholy prounouncements of "woah, woah, woah..." to straight-forward timeless folk -- and back again.

Track three ("Baleen Sample") loses a bit of the momentum the rest of the record gathers. It sounds a bit dislocated and misses sorely from the mesmerizing voices coating the other three songs. Still, the use of steel drum (only one I know outside of a poolside reggae band) to color and emphasize the rest of the piece is well-considered. To me, the piece seems a bit claustrophobic placed against the others using vast amounts of space. "I Remember Learning How to Live", the last track, brings us back to the sound of the first two tracks. It's a jumpier song, but never loses its focus in the face of giddiness.

For a collaboration that didn't really seem to make sense on paper, Prospect Hummer is a coherent statement from two artists capable of trancendence of different forms. A masterfully mature record of psychedelia, Prospect Hummer is another fine transition for Animal Collective and a grand return for Vashti Bunyan.

Back right after these messages...

Dearest reader,

It has been quite a bit since I have last updated this website. And there is no real reason for the lapse, other than I'm quite lazy. I can't get myself to sit down and write a damn article for the life of me and, as anyone familiar with writer's block (or laziness) will tell you, the longer you wait, the harder it is to motivate and find inspiration.

Of course, I have been absorbing all types of recorded sound, as well as one live concert, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy at the Theatre of the Living Arts in Philadelphia, with my honey dips. Really a fun show -- a nice performance, safe for music fans of all races/creeds and, most importantly, enjoyable lover music. We had a great night of beer drinking, music listening and faux-dancing/hipster-leg-tapping.

So, anyways, in my time of departure, I have been listening to a fair amount of music and neurotically organizing my iTunes files. A few choice selections that I may or may not write about in the future:

• Spoon - Gimme Fiction (!)
  
• Dusty Springfield - Dusty In Memphis
• Akron/Family - Akron/Family
• My Morning Jacket - The Tennessee Fire
• Jesu - Jesu
  
• The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree
• Caribou - The Milk of Human Kindness

Also, due to my ever-expanding and enormous internet celebrity, I have been asked by Seattle-based label Wax Orchard (and the lovely, Ali Marcus--ali@waxorchard.com) to review a CD by Pistol Star entitled Crawl. Obviously, I will gladly entertain a role in the promotion cycle and you can look forward to that in the near future.

In the meantime, please feel free to contact me with some selections that I may have missed in the past few months, or anything that makes you feel sexy, vulnerable, and/or violent.

Best regards,

Brett

P.S. -- I love you!