- Look, the last Animal Collective was a bit of a steaming turd, despite the fact that it got the guys back together again. Since that morning excretion two years ago Panda Bear has been off ugh 'Doin' it right' with Daft Punk while Avey Tare has been at it semi-solo with his new band Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks which also features Angel Deradorian of Dirty Projectors fame and Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman, and the results on paper are B-Side Animal Collective tracks mixed with imagery stolen from Rob Zombie.

So, must be crap hey? Well, yeah it kinda is, that's what I'm saying. It continues on in a way from where Centipede Hz left off and is far more stylised than Tare's first solo outing, Down There. The imagery and narrative that the band have adopted, along with the whole slasher thing, translates into music lifted from a b-grade exploitation film, but as if Animal Collective did the soundtrack. It’s a mixture of some decent electronica, heavily effected guitars and Tare not being able to shut-the-hell-up throughout the whole record. He leaves no room for much else in most of the tracks and is singing some twaddle or other for very nearly the record’s entire 49 minutes.

There are some OK moments: The Outlaw has a nice Tare lead build up while That it Wont Grow has some slower moments that are a relief. That being said, those two tracks sound nearly exactly the same, another recurring problem with this record. The production feels homogenous and monotonous and the music features little variation. Strange Colores is an exception to the rule and could almost have been plucked from an entirely different session. You can actually hear Deradorian in the track! Roses on the Window has a nice beat and flow to it but again Tare wont shut up for the track's six minutes. There's seven-odd overdubs of his own vocals at points and the amount of times he says the word “roses” would make you think his day job during all this was as a bloody florist. Closer Your Card mixes in some good ideas as well, but, structurally, falls apart in the second half, losing its initial impact and experimental interest, as does Catchy (Was Contagious): average high school lyrics and pointless vocal effects drive it to be drivel, just when you thought a song like We Tigers was back!

At times this record hints at earlier Animal Collective, with some of the noisier side of Sung Tongs creeping in amongst the technological noodling. Black Dice is another reference point for some of the things on here. Ultimately, if you invest in this, you will skip over the first half (I didn't talk about it for a reason) as the second half sounds like a marginally improved version of the first. As a band, it's not that Slasher Flicks don't work, but rather some of the ideas within the music feel tired before they are even executed. The inspiration that Avey embraced on Centipede Hz needs to meet a slasher in a dark alley, and then, perhaps, he can develop some new ideas. Even the ideas he had pre-Centipede would be OK; Avey, move on already!

- Brad Armstrong.