Painting With

The tenth album from fearless kitchen-sink experimentalists Animal Collective builds on a sound the band first explored on 2012’s <i>Centipede Hz</i>: bouncy, busy, colourful psych-pop for a post-guitar generation. Opening with the most immediate song they’ve ever recorded (“FloriDada”), <i>Painting With</i> strips away the meandering naturalism of <i>Sung Tongs</i> and the cavernous ambience of <i>Merriweather Post Pavilion</i> for a carbonated, synth-heavy sound conjuring '50s sci-fi soundtracks (“Hocus Pocus”), '80s video-game music (“The Burglars”) and something from just beyond tomorrow (“Lying in the Grass”). It’s an album that retains the band’s idiosyncratic sweetness while managing to be unusually direct.