For those familiar with Animal Collective, the introverted, mental mechanics of their songs are usually experienced within the private confines of headphones. Rarely does the occurrence of Animal Collective and, in turn, their individual members’, hyper-visual resonance get to be taken in face-to-face. This fairly uncommon sight was one to behold at Holocene’s early, sold-out Avey Tare and Jabon show.
Getting into the venue was a queue of cigarette smoke and apathetic silence—the line itself extending from the venue to the other side of the block. One thing that bonded the all-ages crowd was adoration of an artist who was so definitive of a specific area in their lives. Avey Tare is who drew everyone there, but the audience got an eyeful of an experience before him.
The opener, Seattle’s Jabon, was of a specific and particular taste. Concealed by a ceremonial cloak similar to those of the ritualistic Ordo Templi Orientis and a painted mask combining the pattern styles of Insane Clown Posse and Guy Fawkes, Jabon’s whole schtick was like some weird, lucid, late-night Adult Swim commercial. Musically, he mixed the heavily tech-based sounds of Black Moth Super Rainbow with the slight mainstream pop accessibility of Animal Collective in what he describes to be “dark ambient avant-garde disco comedy.”
Comedic indeed—he pranced about the stage with the same energy as an overly gesturing drunk uncle at a family reunion, adding a bit of jocular flair that peeked through the buildup from the fog machine. At one point, he read a couple of pages from a children’s book he claims to have written himself before spouting an attempt at a spoken word ditty about different types of pasta.
He made eye contact with someone in the audience, presumably a friend, wearing a sparkling gold tracksuit and a full-face frowning alien mask. The alien projected shock and confusion through its body language, but not any more than the rest of the audience, who weren’t expecting anything weirder than what Avey Tare is known for.
Which, is really just his music.
Since Avey Tare cofounded Animal Collective—a band known for their tendencies toward vocal and record experimentation—back in the early 2000s, he’s lived up to mastery of strange, mentally galvanizing sounds within and outside the group. On his own, Avey Tare, whose real name is David Portner, has a way of conveying highly intellectual thoughts and sentimentality through warped vocality and droney noise.
With his latest release Cows on Hourglass Pond, Portner has reached a peak in this type of sound, with it being the pinnacle of what he’s done as a solo musician so far.
Holocene packed full to see it live—the few spaces left within it during Jabon’s set filled during the 10 brief minutes of the changeover. Accompanied by a pair of touring musicians, Portner bounced around the album’s 10 tracks, imbued by a rotating marble of purple, blue and white lights.
Faces stared in awe as he very tenderly sang about his relationship with aging, such as on “What’s the Goodside?” and with society’s (and his) bittersweet obsession with what we can’t have, like on “Taken Boy.” Portner is a multi-instrumentalist, and his switching back and forth between acoustic guitar, electric guitar and bass was another high point in the crowd’s attentiveness to fairly slow-tempo songs.
He did throw some curveballs into the album, though. “Saturdays (Again)” was one of the more lively tunes that made people more than a slight, eyes-closed head nod. Its hook recalls classic Animal Collective a la Strawberry Jam without necessarily being a carbon copy replication. “HORS_” and “Eyes On Eyes” were other particular crowd favorites reminiscent of definitive Avey, adjusted to embrace his maturation throughout the years.
What was most entrancing, however, was Portner’s way of trying to connect with the crowd. At random bits in his set, he’d pause to check in with the wide eyes that watched him, his voice at a pitch you wouldn’t expect from someone near 40. People responded with shouts of adoration and cheers that echoed even more when there wasn’t music to back them.
Despite it being unnecessarily warm inside, no one budged, aware of the sea of people they’d have to swim through just to find a comfortable space again. “I have to pee so bad,” someone in the crowd shouted at their friend during “Heads Hammock,” one of the only songs Portner played not from the new album, “but I don’t want to miss this.”