''Fall Be Kind'' is the fourth EP by American

experimental pop Experimental pop is pop music that cannot be categorized within traditional musical boundaries or which attempts to push elements of existing popular forms into new areas. It may incorporate experimental techniques such as musique concrète, al ...

band

Animal Collective Animal Collective is an American experimental pop band formed in Baltimore, Maryland. Its members consist of Avey Tare (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Deakin (Josh Dibb). The band's work is characterized ...

. It was released digitally in

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

and

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Win ...

formats on November 23, 2009, and as both a CD and LP in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2009 and in the United States on December 15, 2009. Some stores in Australia and New Zealand began selling it more than a week earlier, due to the band's touring presence there at the time. On November 18, 2009, Domino Records accidentally sent pre-ordered CDs of ''Fall Be Kind'' to customers before the actual release date, resulting in a

lossless Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistic ...

digital version leaking, in its entirety, onto the internet. Recorded by

Ben H. Allen Ben H. Allen (III.) is an American Grammy Award-winning record producer, mixer and songwriter, based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. He has produced and mixed records by artists such as Walk the Moon, Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley, Kaiser ...

Sweet Tea Sweet tea, also known as sweet iced tea, is a popular style of iced tea commonly consumed in countries such as the United States (especially the South) and Indonesia. Sweet tea is most commonly made by adding sugar or simple syrup to black tea e ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

in February 2008 and at Mission Sound in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

in August 2009, ''Fall Be Kind'' includes live favorites "Graze" and "What Would I Want? Sky". The latter track contains a sample of "Unbroken Chain" by the

Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...

, the first ever licensed sample of a Grateful Dead recording. The cover depicts a statue photographed through a brown paper bag attached to the camera lens.

Critical reception

''Fall Be Kind'' was met with generally favorable reviews by critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the album received an average score of 84, based on 21 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". Lewis P. from

Sputnikmusic Sputnikmusic is an American music community website offering music criticism and music news alongside features commonly associated with wiki-style websites. The format of the website is unusual in that it includes both professional and amateur c ...

claimed "it had the impossible task of following up one of the most hyped albums of this decade and yet it barely breaks a sweat." He went on to give a perfect rating.

Track listing

Sample credits * "Graze" incorporates elements of "Ardeleana", arranged and performed by

Gheorghe Zamfir Gheorghe Zamfir (; born April 6, 1941) is a Romanian nai (pan flute) musician. Zamfir is known for playing an expanded version of normally 20-pipe nai, with 22, 25, 28 or even 30 pipes, to increase its range, and obtaining as many as eight ove ...

. * "What Would I Want? Sky" features samples of "Unbroken Chain", written by

Phil Lesh Philip Chapman Lesh (born March 15, 1940) is an American musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career. After the band's disbanding in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of ...

and Robert Petersen and performed by the

Personnel

Credits adapted from liner notes. Animal Collective *

Avey Tare David Michael Portner (born April 24, 1979), also known by his moniker Avey Tare, is a musician and songwriter who co-founded the American experimental pop band Animal Collective. He has released three solo albums, as well as three collaborative ...

Geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...

Panda Bear The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear (or simply the panda), is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is sometimes use ...

Additional personnel * Ben Allen – mixing, recording * Animal Collective – mixing * Rob Carmichael – design and layout * Aaron Ersoy – recording assistance * Andy Marcinkowski – recording assistance *

Heather McIntosh The Instruments is the musical project of Heather McIntosh, cellist in a number of Athens, Georgia groups including Circulatory System, Elf Power, and Japancakes. They released three albums between 2003 and 2008. Other members of the band include ...

–

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

on "Graze" and "Bleed"

References

External links

Animal Collective's Avey Tare Reveals All About New EP, Film, Tour Hiatus

New Animal Collective EP
{{Authority control 2009 EPs Animal Collective EPs Domino Recording Company EPs