Domino Records

Having already released twenty or so records the past decade, the four prolific members of Animal Collective have put out a new EP just as January’s Merriweather Post Pavilion seems to be topping every critic’s year-end list. The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Baltimore band’s five new tracks maintain Animal Collective’s unique flair for progressive music that precariously straddles the line between innovative and inaccessible. Eschewing the latter entirely, however, “What Would I Want? Sky” (which samples the Grateful Dead’s “Unbroken Chain”) mixes carefree harmonies over trippy, carnivalesque noises and eerie atmospherics that, decades from now, could still stand comfortably among the Beach Boys’ and Radiohead’s dreamy classics.

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Buy this at Other Music or iTunes.