Big farewell to a big year

It took them nearly a decade, but Animal Collective decided that 2009 was finally the time to meet listeners with an ear for catchiness halfway.  First came the surprisingly accessible “Merriweather Post Pavillion,” a massive leap into pop territory that they executed somehow without even slightly compromising their trademark of genuine psychedelia (and one of our picks for the best albums of the decade).

This brings us to Collective’s final thought of the aughts.  “Fall Be Kind” consists of five tracks that are as abstract as anything from their back catalogue but extend the bright feeling in “Merriweather” that drew in so many new fans.  It opens in identical fashion, with a two-part song that starts soft and kicks into an enthusiastic sing- and clap-along.  

“Graze” flows beautifully into the stand-out anchor of “Fall Be Kind” and a song I have no reservations with calling one of the band’s best ever, “What Would I Want? Sky”. Interestingly, the title/chorus is a distorted lyric deriving from the Grateful Dead’s “Unbroken Chain”, the first ever licensed Dead sample. The song’s aesthetic fits the title, euphoric and high-flying.

With atypical musical traits including a prominent pan flute solo, those 2 songs paint an uplifting dream sequence that balances out its subdued counterpart, the record’s darker back half.  The final three songs tone down the album’s energy a bit but preserve the diversity, especially the lullaby-like “On A Highway”.

At first glance of any Animal Collective release, it can be near impossible to see past the twitchy, abrasive loops, listener-unfriendly time signatures, and dragged out, hallucinogen-influenced indulgences thrown at you, but they’re more than OK with it reflecting how uncool they are.  “Fall Be Kind” is just their latest declaration that no other music welcomes you directly into a band’s psyche like theirs.