Avey Tare - Down There

Click here to watch the music video for "Lucky 1"
Click here to listen to "Cemeteries"
Click here to listen to "Heads Hammock"

Despite being a year without a new Animal Collective album, we've had our fair share of Animal Collective releases. From the trippy, visual eye-fuck of ODDSAC to the largely anticipated LPs from Panda Bear and Avey Tare, Animal Collective fans are surely being treated in 2010.

For an Animal Collective related record, however, Down There is surprisingly empty. The structure is laid back, nothing more than a man and is sampler.There's something oddly hypnotic about Avey Tare's voice and the drug laced samples that subtly contribute to it; and while it may directly contrast the Animal Collective most fans are certainly used to, I can't help but love the atmosphere it creates.

Yes, this album definitely swims; not in a lush, blue ocean though, but in a dark, murky swamp. The bass drum sustains and the background crawls with watery effects. The album's cover art of the crocodile is entirely appropriate here; Down There is truly an ode to the crocodile and the gloomy, indistinct life it lives.