Animal Collective

New York’s experimental heroes are back with a new EP.

Each of the four songs sees them present their perspective on beauty – sometimes warped like a Cubist painting, sometimes fuzzy like an Impressionist, but always embracing life’s imperfections. The music is almost like a dialectic discourse, always combining opposing forces and moods. The best track here is the epic Street Flash, which sounds like a Beach Boy lost in space with just the whirrs, bleeps and whooshes of his spacecraft for company, but occasional screams ground it firmly in the harsh, bleached sunlight of terra firma. Beautiful if overly academic.