Artist: Animal Collective
Title: Peacebone
Format: 10" Single
Label: Domino
Catalogue Number: RUG262T
Year of Release: 2007
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Tracklisting
A Peacebone
B Safer
The A-side starts with the spoken word 'boneface', and then some clicky noise, which gathers into something more rhythmic and pulsing quite quickly (but probably not quickly enough for some), along with some tom-tom drumming. Then the main vocal comes in. It's unusual for AC to have the vocal so high in the mix, and uneffected, so that you can actually hear the words. Boneface. Not that this helps much, as there's a feeling that the verses might make some kind of sense, but they don't. Here's an example:
I was a jugular vein in a juggler's girl
I was supposedly leaking the most interesting colours
While half of my fingers are dipped in the sand
You progress in letters but you're used to cooking broccoli
The chorus is fine:
And an obsession with the past is like a dead fly
Only a few things are related to the old times
The we did believe in magic and we did die
It's not my words that you should follow it's your insides
That last line is particularly good advice, I suppose. On each line in the chorus the last two syllables are sung in falsetto, which is the only thing that really gives this track melody. The rest is composed of loops, random cartoon-like noises, whip cracks and background shouting. There is guitar somewhere, but it has a vibrato effect on it that makes it melt in to the rest of the pulsing mass of sounds. Boneface. That shouting comes to the fore in a middle eight of screaming chant. The final verse bewilders, then the last chorus moves into a section of chanting "Insides" and then "Peacebone", which is repeated to fade. It's more heavily electronic than previous singles, and it needs a few listen, but it's growing on me. Boneface.
9-minuter Safer starts with a looped piano melody, a heavily reverbed, scared sounding half-spoken vocal, and banging noises, yelps and howls. "The creatures all know that it's safer in the dark", apparently. This might even be an anti-war song: "I don't know if there's any real danger/but I'm all right/if you're all right" - which gets repeated and contracted to a scream of "I'm all right", after which it's like a new song has started. The piano has gone, and a gentle percussive number starts up, built of warm synths and warmer vocal loops, which sounds like it could be an out-take from Feels. Things build, and there some lyrics about not letting torture get you down. Not sure what the point is, but it plods along nicely enough. The wordless chanting being the best part, and the part it takes a minute to fade out on.
Here's some more youtubeness, the disturbing official Peacebone video:
