Animal Collective - Water Curses
[Domino]

Last year's 'Strawberry Jam' was greeted with a clean divide amongst Animal Collective fans - some enjoying the group's mainly colourful electronic pop trip, and the rest, feeling somewhat let-down after the band's career-defining 'Feels' album. New EP 'Water Curses' is a return-to-form for believers of the latter sentiment.

The first song and title track, is the kind of mental-pop they have expressed many a time before (just see Who Could See A Rabbit and Grass for a vague idea) - a kind of free-for-all, where anything goes, and this is where the band are at their finest - impossible to describe, impossible to label or pigeonhole, it's the future thinking music that has seen the Baltimore quartet rise from self-released obscurity, to rubbing shoulders with Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys on Domino Records.

Tracks 2, 3 and 4 are less hyper, more the calm after the storm. 'Street Flash' is minimalism in its most simplistic form - sparse keys and spacious recording provide a little musical backdrop to the lead vocal, which at times when manipulated, sounds not too unlike Mercury Rev's original vocalist David Baker.

'Cobwebs' is everything to love about the band, who here are at their most inventive as percussion and beats sound like a digital tap dropping silicon drips and there is a great playful vocal melody. The finishing 'Seal Eyeing' though, is Animal Collective in ballad form - piano led, evocative vocals and sound recordings of underwater bubbles, gentle waves lapping against the rocks and the howl of wind in the distance.

Although initially described as a collection of leftover songs from 'Strawberry Jam' (this may well be the case) you wouldn't know it. There is a mini-album feel to 'Water Curses'; the way the tracks segue into one another, starting with the headblast intro and getting more chilled as it goes along - much like the average album sequencing. If truth be told, all four of these could have replaced songs on the album and turned it into a classic, but for now who cares - we've got these potentially lost gems and they rank amongst the best yet from this permanently rewarding band.

Tracklisting:

1. Water Curses
2. Street Flash
3. Cobwebs
4. Seal Eyeing