Sung Tongs is the fifth studio album by American experimental pop band Animal Collective, released on May 3, 2004 by FatCat Records. The album, newly exploring freak folk,[1] received high critical reception 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 the album, Avey Tare (David Portner) and Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), a first since Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished (2000), which was originally credited to the duo and only later retroactively classified as part of the band's discography.
Background
Portner and Lennox both moved into a house in rural Colorado for the recording sessions for Sung Tongs, with Portner saying that much of it involved "Lots of singing and messing around with doing vocals in all parts of a room."[4] He disclosed on the Collected Animals messageboard in 2006 that:
we recorded it on the same tascam 48 (half inch 8 track) 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..(i cant remember) 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.[5]
The track "Visiting Friends" was influenced by German minimal techno label Kompakt’s Pop Ambient compilations and Wolfgang Voigt's ambient project Gas, with the intention of being "like a wall of hums [...], but with acoustic guitars."[6]
Sung Tongs has received positive reviews. On the review aggregate site Metacritic, the album has a score of 83 out of 100, indicating "Universal acclaim".[7]
Sung Tongs has sold 27,000 copies in US according to Nielsen Soundscan.[18]
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.[19]
The album has appeared on the following best-of lists:
#9 in Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the Decade's First Half (2000–2004)[20]
^Hegarty, Paul; Martin Halliwell (2021). Beyond and Before, Updated and Expanded Edition Progressive Rock Across Time and Genre. Bloomsbury. p. 315.
^Pitchfork Staff (October 2, 2009). "The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 29, 2023. ... [its] touches might have extended hands (paws?) outward to the best avant-pop of the previous generation...
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