Animal Collective’s Avey Tare sees 7s at the Lodge of Sorrow
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In numerology, 7 holds a particularly potent power, especially for creatives and deep thinkers. According to some interpretations the number 7 represents those who are curious, eccentric, and who take an unconventional path. The number is also associated with the need to find connection with the spiritual.
It would then make sense that Animal Collective’s Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) seemed to see this number spring up all around him during the creation of his latest album “7s,” which is his most personal and introspective project to date.
“I notice patterns a lot in the universe,” said Portner in a Zoom call. “I know that’s vague to say, but something like the number 7, I appreciate numerology and the power numbers have. It started coming up a lot around this record in terms of the number of songs that were on it. Me being 43 when it was released and that adds to 7. It’s all these little things, so I decided to roll with that and instigate the power of 7 into the record, and hopefully it keeps going.”
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Portner formed Animal Collective with his childhood friends in Baltimore. After forming the record label, Paw Tracks, and releasing several adventurous and kaleidoscopic albums, Animal Collective finally ascended to indie-rock stardom with their 2009 psychedelic pop masterpiece “Merriweather Post Pavilion.”
After Animal Collective’s massive success, Portner and his bandmates found time to pursue solo projects. While Portner’s bandmate Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) released the trippy Beach Boys swirl of “Person Pitch,” Avey Tare’s solo output included the folky “Pullhair Rubeye” which required listeners to play the record backwards, as well as the German techno inspired “Cows on Hourglass Pond.”
Coming off of recording Animal Collective’s 2022 comeback album, “Time Skiffs,” and being shut inside his Asheville, North Carolina home by the pandemic quarantine, Portner began to look within and compose demos for his next album. “7s” is a melodic and whimsical record full of strange sounds and highly personal (yet often surreal) lyrics that ruminate on love, death, and making art.
“Doing home recording can often be like that,” Portner said of the more insular tone of the album. “I’d done ‘Time Skiffs’ and ‘Cows’ previously to this one all in my home studio and I was really needing to get out and collaborate, especially with Adam [McDaniel] being an engineer, it just worked out. But yeah, spending a lot of time at home and doing vocal takes and just having a lot of time and space to work on the lyrics in the songs, it was very introspective. It was very cathartic. Just a good way to work with all the stuff quarantine and the pandemic really brought up inside.”
In the song “The Musical,” Portner examines his long career in making music and touring, while comparing it to other musicians that may just want to play their songs to the trees. Portner was inspired by the music community of Asheville which is bustling with Appalachian bluegrass, folk music, rock, and newer styles of music.
“I’m around a lot of people in the music industry,” said Portner. “Also a lot of different viewpoints. I have close friends who love playing music and maybe aren’t looking for a big music contract. I feel like I know so many idiosyncratic people as far as their approach to what they want music to be in their lives. I’ve been doing this for twenty plus years and been on record labels and it’s definitely a time of reflection for me and looking back, having done it for so long.”
“I’ve never really approached a song like that before, and I’m getting an interest in a more conversational style of songwriting to experiment.”
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To create the colorful aural palette of “7s,” Portner worked with friend and producer Adam McDaniel of Drop of Sun Studios. While Portner played most of the instruments on “7s,” with a few assists, McDaniel helped engineer the odd and wonderful sounds of the record.
“Adam is always tinkering around and creating some weird background textures and stuff as I do other things,” said Portner. “He’s good at that, just so we can have a collection of stuff we can either use or not use as we move along.”
Portner has always had an unusual approach to percussion, and “7s” is no exception. In the song “Lips at Night,’ Portner asked his friend who happens to plays baseball to provide the smack of a ball hitting a mitt for the purpose of mixing it into the percussion.
“With percussive sounds I always have such a particular ear for percussive sounds I want to hear,” explained Portner. “I lean more towards random loose percussive stuff often influenced a lot by Brazilian music and jazz drumming too, but I don’t often get into the full rock kit kind of thing. That’s how the baseball thing came up.”
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There has always been a synesthetic quality to Portner’s music whether it is with Animal Collective or solo. The intense psychedelic visuals of his album art, music videos, and stage projections perfectly reflect the dreamlike sounds he produces, as though the songs were a paintbrush.
“I think for me, and the rest of Animal Collective, visual mediums have always been a big influence on us, film in particular, experimental art films and textural films,” said Portner. “I often have that stuff playing in my studio when I’m writing stuff just to have more inspiration. I think we’re trying to create a whole world and a whole environment that has visuals. I start thinking about the visuals as the music starts coming about or vice versa. Sometimes the visuals I come up with can affect the music, and every record to me or Animal Collective has a certain color it’s associated with and we all need to get into the same frame of mind in terms of how the covers are going to look. It’s all one process to me.”
Expect some stunning visuals (created by Portner’s sister Abby) when Avey Tare embarks on a U.S. tour, with an early stop at Lodge of Sorrows on Friday. Portner is going solo this time with just a guitar and synthesizers, which seems to him to be the right approach for capturing the more intimate electronic feel of “7s.”
“I feel like for me the live performance is something a little bit different,” said Portner. “It’s happening to me and I build off of the energy of the crowd and I’m really into the spontaneous sides of live performance, and very inspired by improvisation. I feel like there’s always those elements in my live sets, or in Animal Collective’s live sets. I do think there are some strengths to the recorded versions and some integrity I want to keep there. I also want it to feel organic. I don’t want it to feel like I’m lip syncing over the record, so it’s a balance between something that has the vibe and the feeling of the recorded versions, but also has an organic, off-the-cuff live feel.”
IF YOU GO
What: Avey Tare
When: Friday at 8 p.m.
Where: Lodge of Sorrows, 415 West Boundary St.
Cost: $20
Info: graveface.square.site
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA concerts: Animal Collective Avery Tare at Lodge of Sorrows
