From the start, Animal Collective assumed a different form on nearly every album. Though it was originally released as the work of Avey Tare & Panda Bear, 2000's wild and volatile Spirit They've Gone, Spirit They've Vanished would come to be considered the debut album from the modular cast of players eventually known as Animal Collective. While it's hard to find immediate similarities to output that arrived even a few years later in the record's screamy and disorienting sounds, close listening reveals scattered seeds that eventually grew into the band's one-of-a-kind sound. Spirit They've Gone was built on the foundation of Avey Tare's acoustic guitar and Panda Bear's eruptive yet minimal drumming, but the duo filled out every available corner with layers of electronics, field recordings, auxiliary instruments, and random psychedelic sounds. As with all their future material, there's a core of gripping pop songwriting deep within the noise.
If "Penny Dreadfuls" was stripped down to its melancholic piano and reflective vocal melodies (minus some of the processing and higher in the mix, perhaps) it would register as a pleasantly sad indie ballad. As it is, however, noisy interjections disrupt the song and make it a more abstract emotional reflection. This holds true for most of the album, with buried vocals and dominating synth swirls making it hard to focus on any one element of "La Rapet"'s psychedelia or to locate the hooks of would-be pop tracks like "Chocolate Girl." While Animal Collective remained experimental long into the future, they grew hazier and heavier from this point forward. Homespun production and an overabundance of ideas can give Spirit They've Gone a cluttered incohesion, but there's also brightness here that no version of the band ever quite returned to afterward. There's warmth in even the most abrasive squelches, and a sense of enthusiasm and young excitement carries the songs. While Spirit They've Gone might be a hard sell for fans of the far cleaner sound Animal Collective grew into on Merriweather Post Pavilion, those intrigued by the group's entire journey will recognize ideas that were refined later amid the album's strange tangents. When considered along with the rest of the group's massive body of work, these songs represent Animal Collective at their most hopeful and unburdened, with the rough edges and imperfect production necessary components of that youthful joy.
Fred Thomas. Allmusic.com
