The Dodos
Visiter
The Factual Opinion’s favorite album of last year, Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam, cast a serious shadow over 2008. Whether the beloved Baltimore band had a direct influence on the myriad of artists across the globe who incorporated their tribal rhythms and manic yells into new sounds—from Spain’s El Guincho to New Zealand’s Ruby Suns to Iceland’s Sigur Rós, who completely reworked their sound this year—or whether they simply caught the zeitgeist (which I hear can happen if you don’t sanitize your hands after touching a public restroom’s doorknob), the prevalence of Animal Collective’s brand of indie rock became harder and harder to ignore. When San Francisco’s The Dodos trotted out their second album, Visiter, in March, all of the hallmarks of Animal Collective-indebtedness (Animal Collective Subconscious?) showed up. But Visiter is much more than an homage, largely because of the talents of The Dodos’ two central members. Logan Kroeber deftly incorporates West African polyrhythms into his drumming, while Mark Long—strangely, also a drummer versed West African polyrhythms—structures the songs around the rhythmic groundwork. The result is an unselfconscious blend of global thinking and American folk.
Long found Kroeber while searching for a heavy metal drummer to accompany the songs he was recording as a singer/songwriter, and the two recorded Long's solo album, dodo bird, and an official Dodos album, Beware the Maniacs, before quitting their day jobs in 2006 and touring relentlessly. The duo wrote the songs on Visiter through the long improvisations while on the road, and named the album after a piece of artwork given to them by a child whose South Central Los Angeles special ed class they'd just played for. It all makes for an album that seems to run in one thousand directions at once, from a band with the playfulness, energy and confidence to set up and rock anywhere at any time. Album opener "Walking" turns a gorgeous finger-picked guitar and a man-woman harmony into a manifest destiny as Long worries, "Now I've been wasting so much time/Walking the same street every night." "Winter" sounds like a cast-off Magnetic Fields song (and incidentally had me rocking a winter-themed mix CD in the heat of summer, along with Fleet Foxes' "White Winter Anthem.") that bursts into hand clapping and Beirut-style Balkan horn playing. But it's "Fools" that casts The Dodos out of the province of Animal Collective followers and into true leaders--the song has the slickest and most frenetic rhythm of any on Visiter, and Long's vocals nestle perfectly into it, building to a striking closing refrain "I've been/I've been silent." If he's speaking autobiographically, then Visiter is the cacophony of all of his ideas bursting forward.
-Martin Brown, 2008
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