Continuing a trend of their last few releases, Animal Collective’s latest offering leaked online days before it was officially released. This gave their dedicated fan base a much needed hit not experienced since the release of Merriweather Post Pavillion at the beginning of the year.
Fall Be Kind is only a five track EP, but it’s enough to tide fans over until their next album. Of the five tracks only one could be described as disappointing (track three, “Bleeding”), similar to “No More Runnin” on their last album and “Seal Eyeing” on Water Curses. By no means were any of these bad songs; they simply don’t have the ability to become your favourite song of all time for a brief period, like most of this group’s tracks.
The EP opens with “Graze” (originally called “Grace”), a classic two-tiered Animal Collective track that starts off slow and then breaks into what can only be described as synth panpipe cheese.
“What Would I Want? Sky” follows with a nice bouncy feel reminiscent of a mellow take on “Water Curses”.
Track four, “On a Highway” is my favourite song on the EP, though others have been slow to warm up to it. It has joined one other Animal Collective song (“Loch Raven” off Feels) as the only things I would ever describe as ‘hauntingly beautiful’. The percussion that comes in half way through the track and the non-lyrical vocal segments imbue a sense of being lost in a tribal urban landscape.
The EP finishes up with “I Think I Can”. The consensus seems to be that this is the best track on the album. The song opens with a very Battles-like sound, but quickly twists itself into the Animal Collective mould with a very epic sense about it.
As an Animal Collective release, I don’t feel that Fall Be Kind has a chance of toppling Water Curses as their best EP. However, it still contains four absolutely amazing tracks that I look forward to listening to over the coming months.
