(Domino)

This year’s Merriweather Post Pavilion left a lot of Animal Collective fans thirsty for more. All those summery, melted hooks, the warped beats and echoey vocals, not forgetting the shimmery awesomeness of ‘My Girls’ – it was no wonder it made its way onto a lot of peoples’ lists of favourite albums of 2009 (including The List’s for that matter). So riding high on the wave that saw them crash into mainstream popularity this year (they’ve been on the go all decade long, but 2009 definitely seems to have been their moment for a breakthrough) – they return, with another release before the year’s over.

Fall Be Kind is a ‘leftovers’ EP, containing five tracks that didn’t make it on to MPP. Those who didn’t like them before won’t be converted by the wonky, dreamy electronica, and for fans it’s another solid chunk of goodness. Play it on iTunes, and it comes up with the genre ‘unclassifiable’, which is a good sum-up of the sublime, bleached out haze of stand-out track, ‘What Would I Want? Sky’ and the demented Disney lullaby of ‘Graze’.

An ephemeral, trippy treat. And something to keep fans happy until the band premiere their first film, the ‘visual album’ ODDSAC in late January at Sundance.