Reviews > Animal Collective
Animal Collective Makes Music For People On Drugs
By Johnny Firecloud
Friday, January 9, 2009
With Radiohead’s steady dominance of avant-garde pop/rock appearing to be at least semi-permanent, it only makes sense that Animal Collective was bound to get their day in the sun. It’s not hard to see why the Legions of Yorke have leaped like ecstatic lemmings off their many cliffs into the ocean of trippy computronics that is Animal Collective. Their dissonant, gorgeous melodies weave through a psychedelic, alien terrain of jagged breakbeats and off-time, classically arranged atmospherics, like a 3-way bridge between Sigur Rós, Air and the aforementioned Rainbows-makers.
Anyway, Animal Collective’s ninth album has been ecstatically anticipated by many, and on paper I can understand why. They proved their soundscapes prowess with Here Comes The Indian, and the depth of harmonic texture and melodic hooks made Sung Tongs a magnet for new fans. Merriweather Post Pavillion blends the two, but dilutes the potency of each strength by doing so. Put simply, this album is only as good as the drugs you’re on while listening to it.
Pavillion opens as if rising from some murky, churning depth, a tiny organ glow building and radiating a hazy ambience until Avey Tare’s voice rises in a warbly, waterlogged depth, providing the only rudder for the song for a full two and a half minutes, until the line if I could just leave my body for the night, at which point the whole thing bursts into a galloping burst of harmonic weirdness and divinity, pounding away in some undetermined direction. This leads into the high 80s synths and failed attempts at soaring melody that is My Girls. In the span of nearly six minutes I’m reminded of almost every reason I’m so very thankful that we’re out of the 80s.
People are calling Summertime Clothes a masterpiece- a perfect example of the type of hyperbolic hysterics that allows me find sympathy for those who resent Radiohead’s impact on the music scene. The song is a delirious trip to nowhere nostalgia. It feels like a VW commercial that’s already been done. The next catchy Gap ad. It’s a few notches above useless drivel, sure, but by no means is it great.
When it leaked, Pavillion was being hailed by music mags and bloggy rags as the best album of 2009- and the year hadn’t even begun yet. Look- In Rainbows was a really good album. It stood for more than just the music, and will be remembered in the future as a pivotal album in the history of the downfall of the music industry. But it wasn’t meant to spawn a new music renaissance. If we’re really shooting for honesty here, there hasn’t been enough quality material to warrant one of those in more than a quarter century. We’ll get there, but not yet. Not anytime soon. Not while people like Taylor Swift and Britney Spears bathe in limelight and outsell brilliance.
Anyway, for all its meandering indulgence, there’s certainly redeeming qualities to the Merriweather Post Pavillion, precisely the elements that snotty hipsters and loyalists will rally behind in rebuttal to the raw, uncircumcised truth in reviews like this one. Daily Routine is a wonderfully dreamy, string-laced beatfest, while Bluish dips a toe in the Postal Service pond and Guys Eyes hits the ears like a Beach Boys / Beatles collaboration. On acid. In the summer sunshine. Furthermore, a great deal of care’s been taken to fill out the low end, and the new focus on a bass foundation is an added bonus that gives anchor to the fantasy dreams Panda and Avey spin. But there’s no redefinition here, no mind-blowing new directions being taken. This album will not be a landmark.
Songs like Lion In A Coma and No More Runnin’ dissolve into their own weirdness, while album capper Brothersport is a ridiculous, repetitive Eurotrash bounce-fest that doubles as consolation over the death of a father. As the beat rises, there’s an impression of ravers thrashing like epileptics on speed. “Open up your throat,” sings Panda, and we do, but we can’t hear ourselves over the electric fairy parade.
The hype is large, the expectations high, and Animal Collective do their best to meet them- but this is no second coming. It’s good mixtape source material, or just a solid album to put on when you’re really high and feeling good about life. File it next to Talkie Walkie and Ágætis Byrjun.
Merriweather Post Pavillion
Domino Records
January 13, 2009
1. In the Flowers
2. My Girls
3. Also Frightened
4. Summertime Clothes
5. Daily Routine
6. Bluish
7. Guys Eyes
8. Taste
9. Lion In A Coma
10. No More Runnin’
11. Brothersport
- 01. In The Flowers
- 02. My Girls
- 03. Also Frightened
- 04. Summertime Clothes
- 05. Daily Routine
- 06. Bluish
- 07. Guys Eyes
- 08. Taste
- 09. Lion In A Coma
- 10. No More Runnin
- 11. Brother Sport
how do you manage to mention britney spears in every article you write?
she’s a friend of a friend
I wonder if the cover still causes optical illusion when printed, probably yes, but it still sucks.
I’m starting to think that all this “avant-garde” thing is about making weird pictures (the second one reminds me of The Knife), weird things (like Radiohead’s laser music video, or the cover of this album), and of course being weird just as well.
BTW
Never heard of Taylor Swift, he sure ain’t in any spotlight.
taylor swift is a she… who has held the #1 spot on the billboard charts for most of the past eight weeks or so, pwning such debuts as chinese democracy weeks after its release. what johnny might not know is that unlike britney and company, taylor actually has been writing her own songs since age twelve or some shit, and got her record deal the old fashioned way, by pounding the pavement and playing shows. not via american idol or major label manufacturing.
it’s pop music; i’m not a big fan and i don’t expect anyone else here to be much of one either. but she deserves respect.
yep, i know, and no, i don’t care.
restekp
Fuck musicians with those long, pitiful, (and probably) made up biographies, I don’t give a shit how many cocks someone had to suck to get to where they are. They were christians, but now worship satan’s ass.
Most of those people stop giving shit about their music as soon as they hit the top, “from now on, it’s just counting money”, seems like poverty gives them the kick, it should stay that way. Oh, and almost forgot The Jonas Brothers, or whatever, purity rings? Yeah, tell me that ain’t bullshit, masses are bored of badass rockstars like Avril Lavigne or Gerard Way, so labels made they move…
Firstly, you don’t have to be on drugs to appreciate the music; all you need is to be in a really good mood.
Secondly, Animal Collective are pioneers in the indie, experimental and pop scenes with their multi-layered and carefully decorated songs with so much going on within each song that they become nearly infinitely replayable. Many people will feel at first that all of the added effects are unnecessary, but if they’re willing to go back to this album (and their others) then they should see how necessary they are with how they blend seamlessly within what is essentially a tried-and-tested pop structure. There’s not really too many ways that music can evolve now and I believe that the multi-dimensionality of their discography is going to be looked at as pivotal in the evolution of music in the next decade.
Oh, and Britney Spears doesn’t compare to Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is a far better songwriter, and her music is country-tinged pop whilst Britney Spears tends to lean towards disco-pop nowadays
“raw, uncircumcised truth”
Give me a break.
ugh. after reading this ridiculous review, i gave it a listen.
shit sandwich.
Hey, our review wasn’t ridiculous, Skwerl, K Sawyer just liked the album a lot. If you read the comments, we didn’t even necessarily agree with him!
haha, fair enough. it happens. no disrespect intended.
This seems like such a reactionary review to months worth of hype rather than an honest listen to the album. Radiohead has nothing to do with AC, except that Rhead (my first favorite band) tried making sample-based albums like Person Pitch and MPP only to give up due to the difficulty. Radiohead started in mainstream pop and grew experimental, AC is the other way around. Your comparisons suggest that you have no idea where AC is coming from (sigur ros!?) and that you’re hating only because you’re old and don’t get it.
we don’t do that around here. we torture ourselves to make sure we’re giving everything we cover a fair shake. i double checked johnny’s assessment. i know a lot of people love this album, and it isn’t just manufactured hype. but i honestly think he was generous with the 2.5 stars. the album is a snooze.
god you guys are assholes
animal collective is pretty amaizing, i guarantee that if you have any sence of what muzik is you will come around to them. i instintly loved everything about them but most of my friends thought they would never like them, about 3 months later they all came to me beging for their cd’s. you just have to open your mind. 8)
I sure hope that the AC moves away from this poppy shit. Even though I love much of the group’s music, I’m inclined to agree with much of what this review says. It’s a combination of a lot of things, and unfortunately, it feels diluted. Most of the songs have very limited re-listening value (I can’t fucking stand “My Girls” anymore). I don’t listen to that album at all anymore, truth be told. Same for Fall Be Kind. There’s something about it that’s… I don’t know. It’s just too synthy, it all feels uniform in a weird way. Part of the reason I love the Dead is because they have a great sensibility, and that’s a lot of what I like about Animal Collective, too. But at this point, all their shows sound pretty much the same (due to the heavy reliance on sampled sounds and synths), and their albums feel far too polished. I like it rough around the edges; I think my problem with new Animal Collective is that their music no longer feels natural and human the way it did on many of their previous albums. All in all, yeah: MPP kinda blows.