AMG Review of Water Curses

John Bush
All Music Guide

Animal Collective LPs are dizzying affairs (even to fans), jumping from song to song and mood to mood with barely a look backward at what preceded it. Therefore, the Water Curses EP is a good opportunity to see Animal Collective in action on a small scale. Certainly, there's no lack of quality here compared to the better-promoted LPs: the title track is a bruising but nimble piece of warped psychedelic pop; second track "Street Flash" is a more extended meditation, prosaic but equally fervid. (If you were forced to pin the group down to two basic modes of operation, these two tracks would be excellent examples.) Both of them show AC at the peak of their powers of songwriting and production.