In spite of the collective creative dry spell for the Baltimore’s Animal Collective the various band members have been able to capture magic on their own solo terms. For Avery Tare leader of the group, that magic came in the form of 2010’s swampy, yearning gem “Down There” Seven years later he’s made a welcome return with the haunting Eucalyptus.
The fly in the ointment of Animal Collective’s last two albums has been their lack of focus, and the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach. Working on his own, Avey Tare has smartly drifted away from this practice. Instead he makes his music endlessly infectious and shed the excess weight. Avey’s strength as a musician and songwriter has always been his ability to find melody in the most broken of frequencies. On Eucalyptus, he in turns found some sounds into tiny earwarm pop songs.
Eucalyptus is an album full of half songs, faint ideas and distant sounds. There is hardly a single track that is recognizable in the form in which we typically identify song. The album’s longest track, and perhaps its most effective, is “Coral Lords.” The entire eight minutes is marked by an underwater sound, torrents of rain rush in and out just as Avey’s voice does.
Fans of Animal Collective’s “Merriweather Post Pavillion” may find Eucalyptus to be too malleable, or to lack in bracing moments. However, anyone who was transfixed by the alchemy of albums such as Sung Tongs or even Animal Collective’s most underrated release, the 2005 EP Prospect Hummer, are in for a treat. Avey Tare has conjured up the free-spirited nature of those releases brilliantly with his second solo album.
The Fat Angel Sings 