WERS 88.9 fm - Album Review: Animal Collective - Fall Be Kind

December 16^th, 2009

Animal Collective was already the band of the year thanks to their magnificent January album Merriweather Post Pavilion, so when they announced a new EP, Fall Be Kind, for the end of the year, speculation lit up regarding whether they could continue their creative peak.  And this EP defiantly announces that Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist have no intentions of slowing down.  It's another incredible collection of music from one of the best bands of the decade.

The EP begins dazzlingly with "Graze," featuring Avey Tare's voice wafting slowly through murky production.  The vocals bump into each other, some lines sounding further away than others.  It's a mesmerizing intro, but after two and half minutes, it explodes.  A pan flute sample enters and the whole track kicks wildly into high gear.  It's a shimmering, joyous moment with no clear reference point in Animal Collective's past.  But the EP peaks at track two with one of the best songs of their long career,  "What Would I Want? Sky." The track begins, like "Graze," with a long introduction.  Except unlike the slow, chilled textures of "Graze," "Sky's" intro is far more propulsive, with a beat that seems to walk over itself with some gorgeous vocal loops.  Halfway through, the song becomes something incredible, as a sample from the Grateful Dead's "Unbroken Chain" enters, perhaps the most splendid sample in Animal Collective' catalog.  Avey Tare begins to deftly sing over it, the effect being one of the most absolutely spellbinding moments on record this year.

Animal Collective has always drawn comparisons to The Grateful Dead, but now these comparisons seem more apt than ever.  The Dead were a polarizing group.  To many they stood for hippie idealism and aimlessness.  But to their followers they represented something else.  They were kindness, gentleness, and love.  They were your friends, and they had nothing but good intentions, despite all the bizarre paths their journey took.  The sounds of older decades shone through in their music, but they were powerfully reassembled, resulting in a sound that was new but familiar.  Animal Collective's choice of sampling the Grateful Dead, and the Dead's decision to grant legal permission for their songs to be sampled (for the first time), is the symbolic gesture of the year.  Animal Collective is acutely aware of the music that preceded them.  Panda Bear draws frequent and rightful comparisons to Brian Wilson.  But they incorporate that influence into something bold and new.  They innovate with every album, and it's clear that they will be the ones to push music to where it's headed in the future.  Between their lengthy, shared sonic explorations in concert, the display of  remarkable unity as a band, and the extreme divisiveness of their music, Animal Collective and the Grateful Dead are two bands in sync, just in different times.  But Animal Collective has a focus the Dead often lacked, and the ambition, and skill to live up to it.

-By Zach Haldeman