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.