Sung Tongs


Sung Tongs is the fifth studio album by American experimental pop band Animal Collective, released on May 3, 2004 by FatCat Records. The album generated much praise from critics upon its release and was featured in best-of lists at the end of 2004 and the decade of the 2000s.
Only two of the band's four members play on it: Avey Tare and Panda Bear, a first since Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, which was originally credited to the duo and only later retroactively classified as part of the band's discography.

Recording

On the Collected Animals message board, Portner detailed the recording equipment used:

"Yeah, we recorded it on the same tascam 48 that I recorded Spirit on and the drums guitars and early electronics for Danse Manatee. That is we recorded the acoustic guitars and the vocals on 8 tracks. Then we mixed it down on Rusty's laptop and recorded many vocal and percussion over dubs. He's been using that for years. We mixed it from that onto....something.. at Noah's mom's place in Baltimore. It was very cold so we had to wear jackets the whole time. We added in all those samples and electronics there. We mixed for awhile so its sweet you like the mixing. Oh and we used AKGs and an old ribbon mic to record with. Though we had a pzm and some sm57s that we might have used as well. I remember using the pzm to record me slamming the door of the house which is what that distorted rhythm track in kids on holiday is. The person talking at the beginning of Who Could Win A Rabbit is someone in a deli in my neighborhood."

Moreover, they used exclusively red light during the recording process:

"Lots of singing and messing around with doing vocals in all parts of a room. It was basically like a two bedroom house but the living room was all cement...thats where we recorded and the bedroom was where we set up the mixer. Its on the property that my parents live on in Lamar, Colorado. We rented a bunch of mics here in nyc and took my eight track out there with us. Rusty would just listen to every song as we would play it live and walk around the room for a while and then decide how he'd want to mike the guitars. Noah and I both did the percussion during over dubs throughout the session as well."

Songs

The short track "College" with its line "You don't have to go to college" has often been mistaken as a political statement. "I just threw that line in there to make it funny and to be anti Beach Boys cause the song is so Beach Boys to begin with. You know it's like the anti...'Be True to Your School' mentality of the fifties," Dave Portner explained on the Collected Animals message board. "The response to that song has been amazing. People at gigs scream for us to play it, and we get emails from kids asking for advice", Portner said in an Interview in 2005.
The song "Visiting Friends" was influenced by Kompakt’s Pop Ambient compilations and Wolfgang Voigt’s project Gas. It was meant to be "like a wall of hums , but with acoustic guitars."
Recalling the recordings of the album's single "Who Could Win a Rabbit", Portner wrote on the Collected Animals Board: "The first time we played back who could win a rabbit after we recorded the initial tracks we just cracked up and said 'holy shit, we made that????....'"

Reception and legacy

Sung Tongs has received mostly positive reviews. On the review aggregate site Metacritic, the album has a score of 83 out of 100, indicating "Universal acclaim".
The song "Winters Love" was featured in The Simpsons episode "A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again". "Winters Love" also appears a number of times on the soundtrack of the John Cameron Mitchell film Shortbus.
Sung Tongs has sold 27,000 copies in US according to Nielsen Soundscan.
The album was performed live in its entirety by the duo for Pitchfork's 21st birthday on December 2, 2017. It was followed by a tour in 2018.
The album has appeared on the following best-of lists:

Personnel