Album: Avey Tare, Down There (Paw Tracks)

This debut from Animal Collective's frontman is a frustrating affair, hobbled by Tare's determination to smother everything in such massive reverb that the songs struggle to sustain any shape.

Opener "Laughing Hieroglyphic" is typical: a fractured electronic beat, a woozy waltz of synth, and a slurred blurt of which occasional phrases like "the light in your dreams" are discernible. On "Oliver Twist" and "Ghost Of Books", things are made worse by having several layers of treated, cavernously reverbed vocals smeared across each other. Elsewhere, "Heads Hammock" sounds like underwater dubstep, while the sloshy keyboards and murmured vocal of "Cemeteries" sounds like music being drowned. What's most frustrating is that in tracks like "Lucky 1" and "Heather In The Hospital" there are hints of a renegade pop sensibility at work.

DOWNLOAD THIS Lucky 1; Heather In The Hospital