Avey Tare & Kria Brekkan Pullhair Rubeye

Of all the bands to have their music affected on a grand scale by David Lynch, who better than those rascally fellows from Animal Collective? As David Coleman put it best, "At this point in their career, comparing Animal Collective to anyone other than Animal Collective is a futile act," and it's true. With the recent Strawberry Jam, they crafted what will probably go down as one of the finest, offbeat pop records of the year, and rightfully so. And what about Panda Bear, taking his own collective animal persona to town and, for my money as well, making one of the best albums of the year with Person Pitch? Yes, the year might just belong to the members of Animal Collective and their Lynchian pop ways.

None were blessed by this Lynchian exterior more than Avey Tare and Kría Brekkan's Pullhair Rubeye, a simple folk album consisting of charismatic vocals, acoustic guitars and touching pianos. But backwards. Completely so. If this simple-but-devastating production decision wasn't enough to cause a stir (sparked after watching Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE, no less), Pitchfork had to kick them while they were down, shoving a surprising 1.0 onto the album and calling it a day.

"For me personally, the irony is that I've long considered myself the biggest sucker ever born for the simple backward effect," Mark Richardson wrote, hoping to shirk an image of biased. He proceeds to compare it to the album's counterpart (that would be the "reversed" album, a "damn fine album," which is actually forward, but what is forward is backwards because that is the design to which it was released- get it?) even though he states, ad nauseam, that this is what you get. And, well, thanks to some new fangled thing called the "internet," you don't even have to buy the album and get ripped off. You can just read the esteemed Pitchfork Media and know what you're getting into, man.

But with Pullhair Rubeye, Avey Tare (David Portner) and Kría Brekkan (Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir) have created not only a consistently aesthetically pleasing album, but also an intriguing one. Brekkan's voice, aided by the almost ingenious decision to collaborate with one of the members of Animal Collective (actually being spouses be damned), is a jaunting squeal, both melodic and unnerving when set alone with Mum or Pullhair Rubeye flipped. Here, it is appropriately alien-like amongst the garbled reversing. Avey Tare, so wonderfully strong in Strawberry Jam, is the sullen lullaby to Brekkan's striking mesh into her surroundings. She is the conductor to Pullhair Rubeye's acid trip; songs like Sis Around the Sandmill become nightmarish, Brekkan's words an alien language and not the fragmented English.

In some cases, the reverse nature brings layers to the album like the songs were constructed around the idea. Opis Helpus becomes an eclectic dance and chant around a campfire, adopting a dreamy lullaby in its sway to the six-minute mark. Foetus No-Man, in its record-scratching glory, could very well be sampled for a hip-hop song and even exhibits a striking resemblance to For Reverend Green's lead-in on Strawberry Jam. The fact that this is only the case because of a last minute production decision makes it all the more amusing; a puzzle piece to a grander, intricate, Animal Collective design, like an in-joke we all just don't get.

Pullhair Rubeye isn't an easy album to get into. It isn't an easy album to hold onto. But underneath it's warped layers lies that same Animal Collective heart, raw and animalistic. And like any Animal Collective album, it holds a beauty, out of reach until it slowly, but surely, comes into focus. Palneka fits this scheme well, gently wafting in its quick acoustic string-cum-computer noise stroll. It may not always work (Sasong is the most blatant victim of the production, the prominent vocals sticking out at its quickened pace), but album closer, Was Onaip, brings a sense of completeness to the preceding matter, gentle in a wash of its wave tempo, rising and falling with ease.

Does this mean I don't think people can't hate it? Of course not, but extremes are extremes. It may not be elegant, but there is elegance to it. It may not be accessible, but it's far from boring. It is as surprising as it is faulty, but sometime it's just nice to fade into the lush, sonic landscape of Opis Helpus and feel in on the in-joke. Or you can just blame the weather and David Lynch.