Annimal Collective
Fall Be Kind

By Brian Baker

Animal Collective is assembling the kind of catalog that will drive rock genealogists to the brink of madness. Over the past decade, the rotating membership of the Baltimore unit has delivered eight full-length albums, a quartet of EPs, a pair of live albums, eight singles and over a dozen solo/duo/other releases under various banners. The idea is clearly that Animal Collective doesn’t want to be constrained by any single way of operating or even a particularly stable line-up, a methodology that allows them to pretty much do whatever the hell occurs to them at the moment.

Fall Be Kind , the Collective’s latest EP, isn’t exactly a new set of songs; three of the disc’s five songs date from 2007 when the band was crafting material that would ultimately comprise its last acclaimed album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, released early this year. Those three tracks — an alt-pop carnival jaunt (“Graze”), hash-glazed Eno pop textural travelogue (“On a Highway”) and orchestral vocal loop construction (“I Think I Can”) — were deemed darker and less connected to Merriweather’s direction and were left off the finished product. The other two songs are relatively new and definitely worthy additions. “What Would I Want? Sky” is an electronic indie pop workout that dates from Merriweather but was finished much later and features a sample of the Grateful Dead’s “Unbroken Chain,” the first-ever licensed Dead sample. “Bleed” is a droning noise pop hymn that the band put together for its last tour.