Whether with his long-running experimental pop troupe
Animal Collective, his solo work, or any of his various side projects,
Dave Portner, aka
Avey Tare, rarely takes the same route twice. Fourth solo album
7s closely follows
Animal Collective's remotely assembled 2022 effort
Time Skiffs, and while it's got some things in common with the dense arrangements and surrealistic atmospheres of
Time Skiffs,
7s is in a completely different stylistic area code than the watery rural psychedelia of
Portner's 2019 solo outing
Cows on Hourglass Pond. Recorded with producer
Adam McDaniel and sometimes enlisting the rhythmic help of drummer
Alex Farrar,
7s is a relatively less abstract picture of the psychedelic pop
Portner has made his own over the years. Songs like "Invisible Darlings" and "The Musical" have all the hallmarks of his signature sound. The melodies are wandering yet catchy, and dressed in hard-to-identify sounds that could be highly treated guitars, synths, samples of heavenly harps, or something else completely. Wildly experimental elements always come into the mix, sometimes out-of-nowhere curve balls like
Portner suddenly dousing his vocals in flanger until he sounds like a cartoon duck and other times more slowly, as with the layers of distorted tones that gradually stack on top of the groove that carries "The Musical." The album centers around "Hey Bog," a lengthy piece that slowly blooms out of an ambient introduction into a weird, rubbery kind of meditative funk. The bass synth lines feel inspired by early acid techno, the drums are mostly minimal time-keeping hi-hat clicks, and heavy doses of blissful vocal harmonies and washed-out instrumental textures float almost disconnectedly on top of the rhythmic elements. The song, much like the album on the whole, feels simultaneously airy and anxious. The mix of sounds pulls from throughout
Portner's massive sonic toolbox, going into new territory with the aforementioned acid-esque bass and the fuzzy lead sounds of "Neurons," while returning to more familiar misty atmospheres and blurry acoustic guitars on the softly spiraling "Sweeper's Grin."
7s is a great distillation of
Portner's various and always curious styles, recalling some of the best moments from different points in
Animal Collective's ever-shifting discography as well as finding new inspirations in his solo journey. It's a great reminder of how weird and one-of-a-kind
Avey Tare has always been, and how he's still refreshing his strangeness with every new record. ~ Fred Thomas
![American Football [Deluxe Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0644110027627_p0_v3_s90x140.jpg "American Football [Deluxe Edition]")
![American Football [LP1]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0644110002525_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "American Football [LP1]")
