(Domino)

You’ll be cursed if you don’t listen to this

An immense claim it may be, but Animal Collective are one of the best band's making music today. Those unfamiliar to the band will find them unsettling, perhaps a little scary, but there are few bands more in touch with their own ideals and even fewer that are as unique. Seal Eyeing is a curious soundscape typical of their earlier records - sparse, ungiving, spaced out and twisted around. Subterranean samples elope with unusual textures, any hints of melody are impossible to trace, and yet the song is hypnotic, alluring. The mellow and leisurely live favourite Street Flash takes on an uncomfortable edge with the sample of an infantile scream/laugh that punctuates each line, and yet they make it work as well as any guitar chord. In fact, they make it work better.

Cobwebs is the sole disappointment on the EP, and while lengthier songs like Street Flash seem directionless but aren't, this one in fact appears to be so. It feels like they could have done more with it, and is more deserving of b-side status than the other tracks. The title track stands as a perfect summary of what the band represents - pure pop music that is so delightfully inverted in execution it becomes something entirely new. Miscellaneous sounds of nature pervade the background, and it feels like it would take hours to discern every chirp, ripple and click that bubbles beneath Avey Tare's astute melodies. It’s a transportation to the hazy, organic pop wonderland that the band have crafted so well, a consistently remarkable aesthetic in which new and mysterious subtleties constantly rise to the surface. It's in this realm that Animal Collective are tremendously successful in being that somewhat rare commodity in modern music - musicians.

****

MICHAEL PINCOTT   

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