Tare bares it all on debut

His Animal Collective co-leader, Noah “Panda Bear” Lennox, took a do-everything-imaginable-yourself approach to his cutting-edge solo efforts, but Dave “Avey Tare” Portner’s first solo album sounds more, well, solo.

Relying chiefly on drum machines, Portner is less expansive with instrumentation on “Down There” than on his work with Collective. Do not think, however, that this record does not accomplish exactly what Portner wants it to.

Every track on this album makes it instantly clear to those familiar with Animal Collective’s trailblazing catalogue that Portner’s intentions here lean far more toward extremely personal catharsis than innovation. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the penultimate track, “Heather in the Hospital,” a strained, vocally distorted lament about his sister’s cancer diagnosis. Other tracks feature dark, murky soundscapes that evoke some really gloomy imagery resembling that ghostly crocodile on the cover.

But “Lucky 1,” similar to the ecstatic “Brother Sport” off Animal Collective’s 2009 release “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” is an optimistic finale: the sound of a happy ending, or at least a hopeful one, to Portner’s torment. With his fullest bellow, he tells us to “Fly off from harder days/Today feel like the lucky one.” These are sad times for Portner, but he will move on.