Pullhair Rubeye

It was bound to happen. You give some kid the technology and the drugs, and eventually he’s going to release an album that is recorded backwards, every lysergic second of an interminable 32 minutes.

That’s what Animal Collective singer/songwriter Avey Tare and wife Kria Brekken have done on Pullhair Rubeye. As if song titles like “Lay Lay Off, Faselam” weren’t inscrutable enough, Avey and Kria have fun speeding it up, slowing it down, putting it through a sonic blender, and then playing it all in reverse. And it all comes out as something like “Ishneh kooooshi elnaaaah aywaaaaah.” It could be Hopi, but instead it’s hopeless.

I remember the sixties, sort of, and I remember John and Yoko. So what do you do with a “groundbreaking” avant-garde concept that was a bad idea forty years ago? I say lay, lay off, Avey and Kria. Number nine, number nine ...