The New Music

Animal Collective Fall Be Kind [Domino]

They really didn’t need to do this. After over-stimulating us way back in January with Merriweather Post Pavilion, an album that still reveals brand new elements and nuances almost a year later, Animal Collective cap off a career-making year with five more mind-bending gems.

Fall Be Kind is not a companion EP, but a stand-alone work that peels yet another layer from their infinite onion. Well, actually, opener “Graze,” was originally imagined for MPP, and I can see why. The soaring, echo-y haze keeps ascending until it trickles into a coda that’s as much some Celtic/polka concoction as it is a carbonated AC breakdown we’ve become accustom to.

“Bleed,” on the other hand, looks back to the more jam-filled formative years, where they were more about simplifying music by stretching out songs into extended refrains (though this one isn’t even four minutes). “On A Highway” too eschews MPP’s boisterous activity, spreading its wings and soaring off into a pensive, dubby drone.

Since its initial announcement though, Fall Be Kind had most people curious to hear what they did with the sample they lifted from the Grateful Dead’s “Unbroken Chain.” As the first act ever to receive clearance from the Dead, AC certainly put it to good use. The guitar part is looped and then absorbed into their intricate layers, blossoming into a bona fide pop song that acts as not just the centrepiece but also one of the most accessible things they’ve given us.

Ending on a more drawn out cut helmed by Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) is both surprising and not very. Again, it demonstrates how much Animal Collective like their songs to climb and then expand. While it takes nearly five minutes to arrive, the pinnacle arrives when the song erupts - for one brief, glorious minute - like a gutted piñata expelling a melange of dizzying harmonies.

Apologies for getting seasonal, but Fall Be Kind is like that extra special Christmas present your parents wait to give you after you’ve unwrapped everything in sight – somewhat unexpected, not exactly necessary considering the gift they already gave us this year, and the complete and utter cherry on top of a year that has seen them become the most influential and important band making music.

Who knows what they could possibly have in store for that next album, but let’s hope they’re making that promise to have it out next year as a New Year’s resolution…

Rating: A

- Cam Lindsay