Five years ago, Animal Collective released a track called “Brown Thrasher,” part of a massive charitable compendium called For the Birds. It was a curious little drift, single acoustic notes acting like opened windows for rays of electronic sunshine. That was just Dave Portner (Avey Tare) and Brian Weitz (Geologist), working through their mutual adoration for a springtime idyll. The two liked the partnership, and, as the rest of their main quartet was busy with other projects, decided to keep going. Starting in early 2023, and almost without exception, Portner would write a guitar theme in his Blue Ridge redoubt and send it to Weitz in the heart of D.C. He’d react to each instrumental and send it back. Aside from a shared mixing session in rural North Carolina and another in Baltimore with Animal Collective’s Josh Dibb, that’s how easily Croz Boyce came together — two longtime pals, passing the time by making music together. Croz Boyce, out May 8 on Domino, feels like a celebration of friendship — of the chance to share a lifetime together even if from a distance.

Opener “Hanging Out with a Blueberry Pop” feels like lounging on a riverbank with your crew, maybe laughing as you pass a joint around, baking in the sun, while “Towson Acid” maps the edge of oblivion where even the plainest of facts don’t seem certain and reality refracts into a dozen different images. But it’s not all laughs and lounging by the water. At least half of Croz Boyce feels like a wordless meditation on these anxious times, on the endless bubbling up of bad headlines and counting down of the doomsday clock; “Father Karras” suggests two hands nervously rubbed together, its string scrapes and warped synthesizer lines and Derek Bailey guitar staking out a landscape of uncertainty.

Back before Animal Collective was really called Animal Collective, the goal was for that loose confederation of close friends to make music together as time and personnel and circumstance allowed. Weitz and Portner were going to call this music Geologist and Avey Tare, but they began this project around the time that David Crosby died. A Dropbox folder named “Croz Boys” mutated into the handle Croz Boyce—not a tribute to the Croz’s music at all but maybe an unintentional tribute to the idea that there are lots of worse ways to pass your life than making music with buds. Take this music on a hike or a walk or a lazy riverside day. Listen. Decide for yourself.