This is my favorite album of all time and has been at this point for over a decade, so at this point it seems unlikely itll ever be dethroned

The album is a funeral dirge for the loss of childlike innocence and primitive mystical identification with the world, as this loss of consciousness is happening in the artists themselves, so it serves as its own document of what it describes

The album is contextualized as being the spontaneous play of forest children raised by fairies and this is what it sounds like. They use conventional instruments (drums, acoustic guitar, synthesizer) to make something that sounds totally mystical & independent of anything else

The cover art depicts the mystical poetic spirits animating the two artists & the title indicates that both have disappeared, similar to Julian Jaynes theory of the Old Testament describing man's loss of direct access to the voice of his higher intuitive self

Avey Tare & Panda Bear both grew up with parents who had very liberal ideas of child education and encouraged their children to play in the woods and make art all day. They described their childhoods as Tom Sawyer-like and totally ideal

Avey Tare wrote these songs after moving from his parents home NYC at the age of 20, going through a period of depression being rudely forced into the adult world

Animal Collectives career after this turned into increasingly self-conscious attempts to resurrect the child-like mode of consciousness, but nothing measured to the debut imo. The cover of Sung Tongs looks like an attempt to revive the dead Spirits of the first album like zombies

Their more recent albums include overt references to standard rituals for adults to temporarily regain immersive creative consciousness, one song on Centipede Hz being about taking amanita muscara and going hiking, their worst album being named "Painting With"

Spirit Theyre Gone Spirit Theyve Vanished begins with a child's voice saying "Do you want to hear a secret? I know one!" and ends with the same child saying "Oh no! Something happened to me! I can't find my singing voice! Now my singing voice is gone!"

A tragedy we unfortunately can all relate to