Croz Boyce at The EARL

From the venue:

Croz Boyce

What if 40 minutes of instrumental music made by two friends passing files across state

lines could capture the range of human experience, or at least a disproportionate chunk

of it—worry and camaraderie, hope and frustration, tenderness and absurdity? That is

the question that steadily emerges across the nine tracks of the self-titled debut from

Croz Boyce, the duo of two musicians who have made some of the last quarter-

century’s most inquisitive music, Dave Portner (Avey Tare) and Brian Weitz

(Geologist) of Animal Collective. Buds and collaborators for so long that it seems

they can have deep exchanges without a word or, in this case, a shared physical space,

Portner and Weitz cry and hug and crack up (good) and crack up (bad) as a pair here. A

record of sweet or fretful acoustic strums and electronics that give every scene color and

depth, Croz Boyce feels like a celebration of friendship, of the chance to share a lifetime

together even if from a distance.

Here is some requisite biographical information for the first or third paragraph of your

record review, depending on the kind of outline you prefer: Five years ago, Animal

Collective released a track called “Brown Thrasher,” part of a massive charitable

compendium called For the Birds. It was a curious little drift, single acoustic notes

acting like opened windows for rays of electronic sunshine. To divulge a little liner notes

data, that was just Portner and Weitz, working through their mutual adoration for a

springtime idyll. The two liked the partnership, and, as the rest of their main quartet

was busy with other projects, decided to keep going. Starting in early 2023, and almost

without exception, Portner would write a guitar theme in his Blue Ridge redoubt and

send it to Weitz in the heart of D.C. He’d react to each instrumental and send it back.

Aside from a shared mixing session in rural North Carolina and another in Baltimore

with Animal Collective’s Josh Dibb, that’s how easily Croz Boyce came together—two

longtime pals, passing the time by making music together.

But the best way to hear Croz Boyce, really, is to forget the backstory for 40 minutes, to

discard notions of why this guitar tone or that rhythmic relationship might sound

familiar. Instead, simply listen and feel: What do these songs remind you of or make you

aspire to? Here are some possible interpretations, all but certainly incorrect in the

merged mind of Weitz and Portner but valid nevertheless. Opener “Hanging Out with

a Blueberry Pop” first feels like lounging on a riverbank with your crew, maybe

laughing as you pass a joint around, baking in the sun; the midsection is the splish-

splash of finally jumping, too giddy to care about the current. Maybe it’s just the name at

work, but “Towson Acid” maps the edge of oblivion where even the plainest of facts

don’t seem certain, where reality refracts into a dozen different images, where even the

drums you hear in the distance are maybe hallucinatory phantoms. And is closer

“Banana Pudding” only these two homies fucking with each other, the space between

the slow strums and the wildly teasing electronics intended to make one another (and,

hey, us) chuckle? It works.

But it’s not all laughs and lounging by the water. At least half of Croz Boyce feels like a

wordless meditation on these anxious times, on the endless bubbling up of bad

headlines and counting down of the doomsday clock. “Father Karras,” which Weitz

actually started, suggests two hands nervously rubbed together, its string scrapes and

warped synthesizer lines and Derek Bailey guitar staking out a landscape of uncertainty.

And “Steven’s Sunshine Rejected” is kind of a beautiful bummer, isn’t it? Portner’s

down-tuned guitar and forlorn slide lines shape a gray playground for Weitz’s

electronics, which move this way and that like gusts of wind. When the pace picks up in

the back half, though, it feels like two people who simply trust one another, reaching

together for something a little better. To reiterate, this could of course all be wrong.

Take this music on a hike or a walk or a lazy riverside day. Listen. Decide for yourself.

Back before Animal Collective was really called Animal Collective, the goal was for that

loose confederation of close friends to make music together as time and personnel and

circumstance allowed. Like jazz musicians showing up for sessions, they’d slap the name

of whoever played on the cover. Branding needs intervened, and, well, we have been

blessed with approximately a quarter-century of Animal Collective. But the idea

remains, as every member of that band has always moved as a perpetual free agent.

Weitz and Portner were going to call this music Geologist and Avey Tare, but they began

this project around the time that David Crosby died. A Dropbox folder named “Croz

Boys” mutated into the handle Croz Boyce—not a tribute to the Croz’s music at all but

maybe an unintentional tribute to the idea that there are lots of worse ways to pass your

life than making music with buds. Again, though, that could all be wrong.