Avey Tare

David Portner, known to most as Avey Tare and a founding participant in the experimental pop outfit Animal Collective, has channeled his psychedelic perspective into the group's widely resonant body of work, a robust set of solo releases, and multiple eccentric side ventures. During breaks from the primary group, he has issued recordings as unpredictable as the entirely reversed 2007 album Pullhair Rubeye alongside more direct songcraft such as the noisily pastoral Cows on Hourglass Pond from 2019 and the fractalized pop of 2023's 7s.

Born April 24, 1979, Portner spent his formative years near Baltimore and first encountered future Animal Collective colleagues Noah Lennox, Josh Dibb, and Brian Weitz while in high school, where they connected through mutual admiration for Pavement, the Grateful Dead, and assorted psychedelic strains. With future BARR leader Brendan Fowler, the teenage Portner, Weitz, and Dibb formed Automine and even issued a 7" single prior to graduation. In 2000 Portner collaborated with Lennox on Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, issued under the billing Avey Tare & Panda Bear yet later acknowledged as Animal Collective's inaugural official release; the record established the collective's fluid roster, with members variously absent from or central to subsequent albums. Portner relocated to New York City for NYU studies, soon followed by the remaining members, as the band increased its live activity and toured alongside kindred noise-rock outfits such as Black Dice, Lightning Bolt, and the Cranium.

During this period Portner launched the side project Terrestrial Tones alongside then-roommate and Black Dice member Eric Copeland. As Animal Collective moved beyond its noisy beginnings and attracted growing audiences, Portner issued sporadic solo-adjacent recordings, among them a 2003 split 12" with experimental artist David Grubbs and the 2007 collaborative LP Pullhair Rubeye with then-wife Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir of múm. Said to draw inspiration from David Lynch films, the album was captured conventionally before being reversed in its entirety and presented to listeners in that backward form. Family difficulties, health challenges, and a divorce informed the opaque, unsettled 2010 solo album Down There. In 2013 Portner began working with ex-Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman and ex-Dirty Projectors vocalist Angel Deradoorian on the brighter Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks; the trio self-produced their debut Enter the Slasher House, issued in 2014 on Domino Recording Company. The same label later released Tare's 2017 solo album Eucalyptus, a sylvan electro-acoustic project featuring guests Deradoorian plus avant-garde musicians Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney. Two years afterward he returned with Cows on Hourglass Pond, a set of rural songwriting and noisy production captured on reel-to-reel at sessions in Asheville, North Carolina. After finishing Animal Collective's eleventh studio album Time Skiffs in late 2020—an effort assembled remotely amid COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns—Portner grew creatively restless and started a fresh solo project. Working with producer Adam McDaniel and recruiting drummer Alex Farrar among other friends, he moved away from the woodsy textures of his prior solo record toward the densely layered surrealistic pop of 7s, released in February 2023.