Animal Collective
★★★★ Time Skiffs DOMINO. CD/DL/LP
Baltimore experimentalists’ first album in six years is a loose, wild treat.
Following the rigid, digital compositions of 2016’s Painting With, Animal Collective’s eleventh LP is an altogether more natural affair. This time their anarchic, playful side takes charge, avant-garde impulses working in service of songs that still play profoundly with structure but are, perhaps unexpectedly, coherent and melodically focused. The audacity is impressive: the various elements of Prester John orbiting its central heavy bass riff like satellites, Passer-by’s spacey folksong materialising from the ether via abstract chimes, synths and gongs, and the endearingly Beach Boysish Strung With Everything a gambolling, giddy mess held together by harmonies and abundant glee. This infectious exuberance might blind you to the craft at play here, but while
Time Skiffs sounds deeply, existentially scattered, every atom is in its rightful place.