If indie rock has become a noisier place lately — higher on gurgles and buzzes, fog banks of reverb and distortion-steeped yelps — Animal Collective deserve credit. Their gift, though, is for crafting noise into something pretty, warm and wet, and you can imagine much of co-frontman Avey Tare's solo debut playing at a very hip spa. "Laughing Hieroglyphic" pairs a pulsing accordion with gently chuckling drums, while "Lucky 1" sets a shimmering field of glinting chords against Tare's nasal but airy harmonizing. Those lyrics that aren't unintelligible are inscrutable: half-formed riddles about umbrellas and undertows. At best, the songs nudge around the furniture in your skull. At worst, they burble, drift and pleasantly fade away.

Keep up with rock's hottest photos in Random Notes.

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.