It’s near impossible to critique Enter the Slasher House without some form of contextual barometer.
Animal Collective’s Dave Portner aka Avey Tare has a fondness for campy B-level
horror which fuels the macabre overtones of both his side project’s new band
name and the album title itself. Additonally featuring Angel Deradoorian-
formerly of the Dirty Projectors- and Jeremy Hyman of Ponytail on drums, every
facet of Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks promises to be something it ends up as
entirely not. Inspired by the mid-60s foray into kitschy garage horror rock
a’la “Monster Mash” and (I suppose) “Purple People Eater”, Enter the Slasher House never quite dials into that concept, often
substituting Tare’s signature vocal derangement for any traces of camp. With
the exception of the wonderful lead single “Little Fang” (a tune as gleeful as
it is relentlessly off-kilter and weird), the Slasher Flicks end up sounding
like a more accessibly calamitous…. Centipede
Hz-era Animal Collective- albeit with a heavier dose of prog-funk thanks to
some truly inspired arrangements from Hyman. To be more precise- if Congratulations is your favorite MGMT
album, Enter the Slasher House is
most likely what you wanted to hear from that band’s dead-on-arrival
self-titled 2013 release.
The sheer auditory cornucopia here is inescapably
hit-or-miss. However, the Slasher Flicks have crafted an engaging barrage of
psych-pop, on par with the masterful solo haze of Animal Collective bandmate
Panda Bear. Despite a briefly saggy midsection, Enter the Slasher House showcases a handful of Tare’s more evolved
moments as a songwriter. The manic “A Send”, combustible “Blind Babe”, as well
as “Little Fang” offer a breathing-room flexibility that was absent from both
Tare’s previous offering Down There
and recent work with Animal Collective. But it’s the six-minute tour-de-force
and faintly dubstep “Roses on a Window” followed soon thereafter by “Strange
Colores” that elevate Enter the Slasher
House into an explosively cohesive listen. That the album avoids seguing
into overwrought gimmickry remains nothing short of a miracle. Left to its own
devices, Avey Tare + grindhouse kitsch has all the makings of one intolerably
noisy ego trip. Yet, Enter the Slasher
House is evidence that although Avey Tare may still refuse to exorcise his
demons, at least he has decided to make peace with them.
