“Hesitate to throw a coin in,
A wish could be a bad thing.”

A companion piece to Strawberry Jam, Water Curses is a bit more stripped back and organic than that album, resulting in a pleasant little entry into the Animal Collective canon. It continues the band’s integration of weird sounds with pleasant pop structures and melodies. To my ears, I think the songs of Water Curses are more akin to the whimsical experiments of Feels than the sonic gadgeteering of Strawberry Jam.

The myriad effects that mutate guitar and keyboard riffs into unrecognizable instruments actually seem to hit on something special instead of just being AnCo’s flavor of the day. The sample-based, lo-fi pop aesthetic of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch seems to have set the tone for the EP, with the more docile, subdued band (though still prone to occasional bouts of feral screeching) moving further from the tribal noise rock of their youth but not embracing a totally polished sound. Less successful is the use of some stock sounds, which, through repetitious use, begin to grate on the ears and highlight how simple some of these songs are if you look past the layers of effects.

Most affecting are the mid-tempo acid-trip ‘Street Flash’—one of the band’s most open love letters to the drug-fueled pop experiments of Brian Wilson in his prime with their own inimitable mid-song vocal freakout and gurgling outro—and ‘Seal Eyeing’, a mellow Brian Eno-ish ambient-with-vocals meditation that works perfectly fine as background music but can also hold the attention on its own.

A minor release, for sure, but for those with an ear for the more relaxed side of Animal Collective, and Panda Bear’s excursions in particular, you will want to hear this brief EP.

Favorite Tracks: Water Curses; Seal Eyeing.