Animal Collective’s Dave Portner & Brian Weitz unveil new instrumental duo Croz Boyce and announce new album
Self-titled debut album out May 8th on Domino First track “Hanging Out With a Blueberry Pop” out today – watch video here
Press photo ‘Croz boyce’
Today Animal Collective’s Dave Portner (Avey Tare) and Brian Weitz (Geologist) unveil their new project, instrumental duo Croz Boyce. Croz Boyce’s self-titled debut album is a series of nine tracks featuring a blend of electric and acoustic string instruments, synthesizers, and percussion, with additional mixing by Animal Collective’s Josh Dibb (Deakin) and mastering by Taylor Deupree. The album is set for release on May 8th on Domino, and its opening track “Hanging Out With a Blueberry Pop” is out today via a video created by the snorkeler/explorer/filmographer Joseph Ricketts.
Cover art ‘croz boyce’
But the best way to hear Croz Boyce, really, is to forget the backstory for 40 minutes, to discard notions of why this guitar tone or that rhythmic relationship might sound familiar. Instead, simply listen and feel: What do these songs remind you of or make you aspire to? Here are some possible interpretations, all but certainly incorrect in the merged mind of Weitz and Portner but valid nevertheless. Opener “Hanging Out with a Blueberry Pop” first feels like lounging on a riverbank with your crew, maybe laughing as you pass a joint around, baking in the sun; the midsection is the splish-splash of finally jumping, too giddy to care about the current. Maybe it’s just the name at work, but “Towson Acid” maps the edge of oblivion where even the plainest of facts don’t seem certain, where reality refracts into a dozen different images, where even the drums you hear in the distance are maybe hallucinatory phantoms. And is closer “Banana Pudding” only these two homies fucking with each other, the space between the slow strums and the wildly teasing electronics intended to make one another (and, hey, us) chuckle? It works.
Back before Animal Collective was really called Animal Collective, the goal was for that loose confederation of close friends to make music together as time and personnel and circumstance allowed. Like jazz musicians showing up for sessions, they’d slap the name of whoever played on the cover. Branding needs intervened, and, well, we have been blessed with approximately a quarter-century of Animal Collective. But the idea remains, as every member of that band has always moved as a perpetual free agent. Weitz and Portner were going to call this music Geologist and Avey Tare, but they began this project around the time that David Crosby died. A Dropbox folder named “Croz Boys” mutated into the handle Croz Boyce, not a tribute to the Croz’s music at all but maybe an unintentional tribute to the idea that there are lots of worse ways to pass your life than making music with buds. Again, though, that could all be wrong.
