Record Review

Animal Collective

Water Curses EP
(Domino; 2008)

Rating: 69%
Combined Rating: 68%

Sometime in 2005 I wrote my first and only piece of hatemail to Cokemachineglow. In the email I criticized Peter Hepburn’s (in my mind) unfair panning of the Prospect Hummer EP (2005), Animal Collective’s collaboration with Vashti Bunyan, bitterly resenting the fact that someone could express an opinion different from my own on an album (jeez!), especially an album by a band as unceasingly great as Animal Collective (double jeez!). Granted, at the time I was a young, googly-eyed noobie of an AC fan, perhaps a bit too uncritical of their work but still justifiably enamored with the skewed pop language they were articulating on my recently purchased copy of Sung Tongs (2004).

A lot has changed since 2005: Peter Hepburn, no longer the victim of my self-righteous verbal ammunition, is now my good friend, and I also write for the Glow and receive hatemail from former versions of myself. Some things haven’t changed, though: Animal Collective are still a great band, and Prospect Hummer remains a pristine little detour off the trail leading from Sung Tongs to Feels (2005). Along with 2006’s People EP, Hummer showed that, at least thus far in their career, Animal Collective utilize the short format not to dabble in new sounds or cash in on odds and sods material (like most bands), but instead to collect the creative spillover from the previous album (of which there is always oodles in the AC camp). So, I’d argue that Hummer essentially reprises the acoustic free-folk of predecessor Sung Tongs (while adding a new singer) and People continues in the Feels vein of looming ambience and shimmering keys.

Any deductive thinker, then, would assume Water Curses follows in the tradition of last year’s Strawberry Jam, an exciting presumption given that that album displayed some of the band’s most thrillingly immediate songwriting yet. That deductive thinker would be wrong, though. The EP’s title track is in fact more evocative of Feels-era AC, especially in the way Avey Tare’s vocals nestle in with the other instruments and contribute to rather than anchor the melody as they did on, say, “Peacebone” or “Fireworks.” In this sense, “Water Curses” is more an heir to “Grass” than a limb of the Jam aesthetic, though it, nonetheless, works remarkably well thanks to smart chord changes and a characteristically great melody.

It’s hard to dish out similarly high praise to the tracks that follow. “Street Flash” and “Cobwebs” slow down the pace significantly and preoccupy themselves too much with creating “watery” textures so that any ebb and flow gets stale pretty quickly. Neither song is bad by any measure (indeed, it’s been a great while since the group made a truly sub-par track); it’s just that AC’s best down-tempo tunes tend to either morph enough times to stay interesting (“Banshee Beat,” Strawberry Jam b-side “Safer”) or cling to their repetition to the point of becoming mesmerizing (“Visiting Friends,” “Baleen Sample”). Neither “Street Flash” nor “Cobwebs” does this and, what’s more befuddling, neither delivers a memorable melody, probably because the songs’ syrupy structures don’t provide enough footing for Avey to truly take off. (His line from “Cobwebs”—“It’s a sticky case, the more I move the less I’m free”—almost seems to corroborate this thesis.) Still, over the dozen or so listens I’ve given this thing, these two songs have grown on me, and if any band deserves the benefit of the doubt, it’s these guys.

Closer “Seal Eyeing” recalls the less-structured final third of Sung Tongs, gracefully drifting along free-floating piano twinkles and closing the EP on a slightly more satisfying note. Even so, the song whiffs of the kind of gentle comedown the band usually positions after a more blistering number, except that blistering number is nowhere to be found. With one catchy opener followed by three plodding jaunts, Water Curses is an unbalanced, albeit very pretty, recording which forces me to declare what I never dreamed I would: here is a great band putting out a just pretty good EP whose existence is really only justified by its brilliant title track. Newly converted Animal Collective fans and old Travisses may send their hate mail thisaway.

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