Going Down There with Avey Tare

Down There, the new solo effort of Avey Tare—one-fourth of New York’s avant-rockers Animal Collective—proves one of 2010’s most startlingly elevating releases. It’s a lucid reverie, a roiling, homemade bouillabaisse, all smeary California psychedelic bliss and dubby dawn-dread churning with aqueous electronics. To create the album’s dappled, sun-flare sonics, Tare (nom d’étrange of Dave Portner, 31) joined frequent collaborator Deakin in a rural upstate New York former church surrounded by marshy, muddy banks. “It’s sort of haunted up there—a lot of ghosts,” Tare explains. “It really fit the vibe of the music I was making. I woke up in the swamps and didn’t know how I got there. It was hard to avoid getting attacked by all the gators around,” the musician says—presumably in jest. More info at facebook.com/aveytare