Animal Collective Celebrate 20th Anniversary of ‘Sung Tongs’ with Live Album, Vinyl Repress

Animal Collective Celebrate 20th Anniversary of ‘Sung Tongs’ with Live Album, Vinyl Repress

This year, Animal Collective will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Sung Tongs, the band’s beloved breakthrough fifth album, with new recordings and represses for its longtime fans. Two decades after its triumphant breakthrough, Sung Tongs continues to be renowned not only as one of the finest works in Animal Collective’s vast discography, but also as one of the greatest albums of the early aughts, which communicated unparalleled influence in the development of the band’s profile and the broader freak folk movement it championed. To introduce its new commemorative collection Sung Tongs Live at the Theatre at Ace Hotel, Animal Collective have shared the preview single “Kids on Holiday – Live.”

Exploding onto the scene in 2004 with a distinctive and eclectic sound unlike anything before, Sung Tongs was the second recorded collaboration between only Avey Tare and Panda Bear, after 2000’s Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, which has been retrospectively termed the collective’s debut. Issued from a period of focused isolation in rural Colorado, the album pulls against itself with the group’s dual endeavors to strip back and simplify its sound after the grandiose soundscapes of previous projects, while still producing full, resonant music. 

On the record, this driving contradiction resolves to a vibrant and richly textured atmosphere, employing wall-to-wall acoustics, eruptive vocals and field recordings to tell a warm, inviting and soul-stirring story.

This singular sound can be heard on “Kids on Holiday – Live,” derived from a 2018 Los Angeles concert in which Avey Tare and Panda Bear played through the album in full. This archival revelation will be released on both digital and vinyl formats, arriving via Domino on October 7. Animal Collective’s celebration of Sung Tongs will also include an anniversary repress of the original album, which will mark its first-ever color vinyl edition. Pre-order both projects and pressings here,

Listen to “Kids on Holiday – Live” below. For more information on Animal Collective and its anniversary celebration plans, visit myanimalhome.net.

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