3.

Animal Collective
Sung Tongs
(Fat Cat, 2004)

I don’t know of any album on this list that was as immediately, shockingly revelatory as Sung Tongs was to me. I mean, how could anyone get past “Leaf House” and not see the world in a completely new light? Along with all the creativity and beautiful musicality that is embodied in this record, one of the most incredible parts of it to me is the childlike wonderment that it invokes. There is just this haphazard, bare foot, running-around-the-neighborhood-causing-beautiful-mischief vibe that no album captures as purely as Sung Tongs does. This is what childhood is. This is the kind of childishness that informs, to one degree or another, all great art.

-Thistle