Weird Music Wednesday: “RV Envy” by Geologist
Brian Weitz, better known as Geologist, has spent decades as the sonic tectonic plate, and founding member of Animal Collective—the guy responsible for the rumbles, digital bird chirps, and the oceanic textures that keep the band’s more melodic tendencies from floating off into space. With his solo effort, Can I get A Pack Of Camel Lights?, he steps away from the collaborative kaleidoscope to offer a record that feels less like a studio session and more like a late-night space transmission from a basement filled with vintage gear and empty cans of craft IPA.
The album occupies a curious space in the band’s evolution. If AnCo’s Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished was the sound of childhood wonder and Merriweather Post Pavilion was the neon peak of their pop-shamanism, this record is the sound of the drive home after the festival has packed up. Eschewing the frantic energy of Geologist’s youth for a more meditative, granular approach to sound design. It fits into the broader Animal Collective arc by stripping away the vocal-heavy maximalism of recent years, returning instead to the textural curiosity that defined their early 2000s experiments.
Can I get A Pack Of Camel Lights? isn’t going to replace your favorite upbeat indie-rock record, nor is it trying to. It’s a quiet, slightly dusty corner of a storied discography. It’s the sound of a guy who has seen the heights of experimental fame and decided he’d rather just sit in the dark and see what happens when he turns this specific knob all the way to the left. It’s a low-stakes, high-texture success.
While the album offers several moments of ambient bliss, “RV Envy” is a song that manages to be both claustrophobic and expansive, capturing a specific kind of American wanderlust that feels tinged with modern anxiety. Unlike some of the driftier segments of the album, “RV Envy” has a steady, water-fowl-esque hypnotic pulse that keeps the listener from getting lost in the fog. The title itself evokes a very specific, slightly pathetic middle-class predisposition to competitive suburbia, that probably involves “enforced familial recreation,” cramped sleeping quarters, and bad (or no) Wi-Fi. It’s the closest Geologist gets to a traditional “payoff,” and it hits precisely when the listener needs it most.
The Song
Spotify:
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/song/rv-envy/1843753686
The Album
Spotify:
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/can-i-get-a-pack-of-camel-lights/1843753682
The Artist
https://geologist.bandcamp.com/
Be sure to check out the Audio Toxicity 2026 Bad Music Detox Protocol (AKA a playlist of songs covered so far…)