The Animal Collective man’s fi rst solo record is a bleak and swampy, ghostly and disturbing, semiconcept album about a crocodile and the swamp it inhabits. That’s an over-simplifi cation, but it’s a record haunted by that character and its surroundings. Inspired by the location where it was recorded – in a church near a swamp in upstate New York – but also by some very personal stuff that Tare was going through at the time.“I was stuck up in some muck,” he explains, “and had to deal with it on my own. After spending a lot of time down there, I sort of had to release my experiences there in some form.”
Best Bit: The near Gregorian underwater chanting of ‘Cemetries’, which is complemented by what sounds like ghostly whale songs in the background.
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Read an interview with Avey Tare HERE.
Read Clash’s album review of ‘Down There’ HERE
Listen to Avey Tare’s ‘Lucky 1’ HERE.