An evening with Animal Collective's pseudo-frontman was opened by guitar expressionist Dustin Wong. Dustin played forty minutes of solo, looped electric guitar accompanied by occasional wordless singing. Under a bed of intricate, classical-influenced loops, he unleashed furious riffs and cosmic leads. The crowd stood in rapt attention, letting out screams for particularly impressive guitar lines and the occasional times that Wong stood up to sing.
The audience was pretty pumped to see Avey Tare since the last two Animal Collective shows had been respectively cancelled and performed without his vocals. While this show was dedicated exclusively to the Enter the Slasher House album, there were definitely serious Animal Collective fans in the crowd. The loose b-grade horror-movie concept of the album was visualized with plastic skulls and the occasional rubber mask, both seemingly from the Dollarama Halloween section. Once the lights went out and the projections hit the skulls, the setup created a pleasantly disorienting effect. The band was barely visible for the entirety of the show.
The band's style of performance was far more aggressive but also somewhat more straightforward than Animal Collective. While they stuck mainly to songs on the album, Tare's group extended most of the songs well beyond their recorded limits with the inclusion of spacey keyboard interludes and furious drumming. Tracks like "Duplex Trip" and "That It Won't Grow" drastically surpassed the album versions. While all three of the band members were great, the drummer stood out, playing rhythms both driving and unnatural. Tare's singing, while heavily processed, was as intense as a punk singer, delivering mostly incomprehensible lyrics. By the end of the show, the front of the crowd had become a big, ecstatic mosh pit hanging on every beat and pulsation.
