Avey Tare and Geologist Return to a Still, Psychedelic Edge on New Album

Dave Portner and Brian Weitz, who have spent more than two decades shaping Animal Collective’s vocabulary as Avey Tare and Geologist, put out a full-length collaborative record today on Bandcamp. The release appears as part of the platform’s Essential Releases series, and it marks a sharp shift from the fractured, dance-adjacent directions the band has explored in recent years.

The two recorded the tracks remotely, blending acoustic guitar figures with electronic textures until the line between them barely matters. Pieces like “Hanging Out with a Blueberry Pop” let chords hang and decay, suspended in synth glow that feels more like sun than machine. The overall mood sits closer to the campfire psychedelia of Sung Tongs and Feels than to the dense, rhythmic chaos of later Animal Collective albums. Nothing here pushes for urgency. The songs unfold at their own pace, bucolic and a little off-kilter, never quite landing where you think they will.

For anyone who lost the thread with the band’s noisier output, this record sidesteps that energy entirely. It trades collective frenzy for something quieter, turning strange at the edges but keeping its center calm. That restraint, and the fact that Portner and Weitz pulled it off from separate corners of the country, gives the project a self-contained weight. You don’t need to know the backstory to feel it take hold.