Album Review: Avey Tare - Eucalyptus

Animal Collective co-founder Dave Portner's second solo release under the Avey Tare moniker is full of the same tessellated, smudgy soundscapes that define Animal Collective's sound but here, a light hand introduces delicate fragility.

Eucalyptus summons the wide-eyed wonder of the band's breakthrough, Merriweather Post Pavilion and sets it loose on vaster plains and cyclical ebbs and flows: one moment the sun is setting, the next it's rising. It's also more difficult than later Animal Collective. Moments of clarity are summarily broken by intruding rhythms and the literal elements. Rain, thunder, waves and waterfalls frequently intervene to set tracks (and trains of thought) off course.