Artist: Animal Collective
Album: Fall Be Kind EP
Year: 2009
Grade: 4.5 pretzels
It feels appropriate that Animal Collective, who turned the world on end at the beginning of the year with their masterful Merriweather Post Pavilion, are closing this year out for us music listeners with the Fall Be Kind EP. In many ways, this has been the Year of Animal Collective. Their music has been great and their expansive, lush sound has been creeping into many of the other major indie releases of the year (Atlas Sound’s Logos is just the tip of the iceburg). I started this year as one of their biggest skeptics, but (almost) twelve months later, I’ve been converted into a believer. Fall Be Kind is just the cherry on the top of a banner year for the Baltimore band.
Fall Be Kind is definitely an outgrowth of Merriweather’s soupy, organic sound. The opening track, “Graze”, is all cinematic, widescreen electronic textures, with Avey Tare’s voice languidly stretching all over the music. The song itself “wakes up” over the course of its five-and-a-half minutes, eventually morphing into a flute-led energetic romp. However, this bright, upbeat song is somewhat unrepresentative of the rest of the music on the EP.
The most audible change in Animal Collective’s music is an emerging sense of darkness, seeping into the frame behind all the squelches and harmonized vocals. “On A Highway” is flag-bearer for this new sound and, in keeping with that role, has already begun polarizing AC fans. Personally, I wholeheartedly support the band following these moodier inclinations even further. “On A Highway” pairs a distant, eerie keyboard riff with a miasma of atmospheric sounds, abstractly conjuring up the noise blur of actual highway driving. The lyrics never quite synch up with the song’s rhythm, resulting in a disorienting and slightly uncomfortable song. Coming from a band that has built its reputation on hyper-colorful, whimsical electronics, I can see why older fans might be thrown for a bit of a loop.
Fall Be Kind is definitely an outgrowth of Merriweather’s soupy, organic sound. The opening track, “Graze”, is all cinematic, widescreen electronic textures, with Avey Tare’s voice languidly stretching all over the music. The song itself “wakes up” over the course of its five-and-a-half minutes, eventually morphing into a flute-led energetic romp. However, this bright, upbeat song is somewhat unrepresentative of the rest of the music on the EP.
The most audible change in Animal Collective’s music is an emerging sense of darkness, seeping into the frame behind all the squelches and harmonized vocals. “On A Highway” is flag-bearer for this new sound and, in keeping with that role, has already begun polarizing AC fans. Personally, I wholeheartedly support the band following these moodier inclinations even further. “On A Highway” pairs a distant, eerie keyboard riff with a miasma of atmospheric sounds, abstractly conjuring up the noise blur of actual highway driving. The lyrics never quite synch up with the song’s rhythm, resulting in a disorienting and slightly uncomfortable song. Coming from a band that has built its reputation on hyper-colorful, whimsical electronics, I can see why older fans might be thrown for a bit of a loop.
The best intersection of these converging styles is the closing “I Think I Can”, with its insidiously catchy main riff and echoing percussion. Spread across seven minutes, “I Think I Can” really showcases the new ways the band members are using space. While Merriweather felt comfortingly dense, Fall Be Kind sounds like it was recorded in a cathedral. These songs have lots of air and room to breathe, but with that space comes a certain ominous feeling. This EP is clearly the next step in Animal Collective’s continuing evolution, retaining enough of the past to keep fans from going crazy, but determinedly looking forward. It’s becoming almost unthinkable that I basically hated this band a year ago. Their body of work over the past twelve months is virtually peerless.
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