Animal Collective Albums (6)
'Merriweather Post Pavilion'
Release Date 1/6/2009
Tracks 11
Label Domino
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Animal Collective have brought the celestial down to earth with each record, but they've never sounded simultaneously otherworldly and approachable quite like they do on Merriweather Post Pavilion. Their eighth studio LP, it finds them at their best -- straining farther away from conventional song structure and accompaniment, even while doubling back to reach lyrical themes and modes of singing at their most basic or child-like. Where before AC expertly inserted experimental snippets into relatively straight-ahead songs, Merriweather Post Pavilion sees them reach some kind of denouement where pop music ends and pure sonic experience begins -- the sound is the only structure. Dismantling the framework of a pop song almost entirely (but using recurring passages in a very poppy way), the group offer a series of overlapping circular elements, all of which occasionally come together for a chorus but then break apart just as quickly. The music itself, at least what's describable about it, consists of deep bass pulses and art-damaged guitars with overlapping vocal harmonies that rise in a holy chorus. This may sound much like previous Animal Collective highlights, but where those records seemed like a series of accidental masterpieces -- the type of work that sounds brilliant only because it's been culled from hundreds of hours of tape -- Merriweather Post Pavilion is a perfectly organized record, not a note out of place, not a second wasted. It has the excitement and energy of Sung Tongs, the ragged sonic glory of Feels, and Strawberry Jam's ability to make separate parts come together in a glorious whole. Like the best experimental rockers surging toward nirvana -- from the Beach Boys to Mercury Rev -- Animal Collective have not only created a private soundworld like none other, they've also made it an inviting place to visit. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The Baltimore-bred, Brooklyn-based Animal Collective have made a name for themselves by being something wholly other. Their music is convoluted, ecstatic, cluttered, noisy, scratchy, itchy and downright fun. Their last two full-length albums, 2003's Sung Tongs and 2005's Feels, create an acid campfire sing out -- with everyone singing a different blissed-out tune in as obnoxious and wildly creative a manner as possible. Sounds are layered on sounds are layered on sounds and are then separated seemingly at random. But Avey Tare and Panda Bear know exactly what they are doing. There isn't anything remotely excessive about AC's excess. They have, until now, presented a holistic view of the individual through the guise of consensus-building pop noiseadelia. With Strawberry Jam, the orgiastic aural carnival sideshow begins to change a bit. There is a growing tension at work here in the music. There is Panda Bear's warm, bubbling sunshine pop that's as childlike as Brian Wilson's or Bobby Callendar's. He's got the cosmic vibe that expresses itself as goodwill toward everything. It's full of padded moments and long, shimmering, blanketing heat. Check his wonderfully accessible hippie blurt in "Chores" when he exclaims: "...Now I got these chores./I'm never gonna hurt no one...I only want the time/to do one thing that I like/To take a walk in the light drizzle/At the end of the day/When there's no one watching." Who knows who's stoned on what? Acid is too easy for this kind of happiness. On the other hand, there is Tare's utter sense of alienation, his strangeness -- and estrangement -- from the limits and inconveniences of the human body and its politics, and his questioning of his own place in human relationships and interactions. It too can express itself as a kind of manic glee, but it's far more brittle. That said, it makes for an utterly compelling, even obsessive listen. The single "Peacebone" that opens the album in a blur of synth and electronic noise breaks loose into a whirring, beat-driven pop song with a messiness in the mix and hallucination-inducing lyrics: "A peacebone got found in the dinosaur wing/Well I was jumping all over while the fuse was slowly shrinking/There was a jugular vein in the jugular's girl/was supposed to be leaking into interesting colors..." On "Unsolved Mysteries" with its sampled strings and pump organ, he begins to engage: "...Why must we move on/From such happy lawns/Into nostalgia's pond/And only be traces..." and then begins to grate with his questions, observations, and neurosis. Thank goodness: these two and their partners in crime are human after all! David Bowie, Philip Glass and Brian Eno can only dream about having been creative enough to come up with "Fireworks #1." Sure, their collective influence (Terry Riley's too, but he's on another plane altogether -- he's not predisposed to such abject "seriousness") may indeed have inspired the song's hypnotic glam ambiences, but they could never have glued it all together so loosely or gleefully. "Winter Wonderland" by Tare is another adrenaline infused orgy of manic musical happiness, even if the lyrics state otherwise. It's got that AC thing where overdrive into infinity is not just a choice but an M.O. The set closes with Panda's "Derek." It's among the most beautiful and tender songs he's written. Mid-tempo and relatively stripped down for AC, the vocal is a Beach Boys styled melody but more complex. Sounds cross the aural landscape on top of, underneath, and next to the melody until about the track's mid-point when all hell breaks loose. Joe Meek and Phil Spector might have bee able to manage a sheer wall of uber-echo this deep in the percussion and keyboards and have the vocals come right out of the middle, floating above and around the mix. So this tension and sharp, edgy contrast is felt now more than ever before on AC's records, but it's a great thing. It doesn't feel or sound personal, and it doesn't sound as if anybody is interested in closing the gap. Which is wonderful, because what literally bleeds out of the speakers is the most primal yet most sophisticated record AC have done to date. Children could sing these melodies -- and that's the point -- but it took cleverness, a collective sense of humor, and faith in one another to put Strawberry Jam into such a seamless, delicious whole. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Originally issued as a limited-edition LP, Hollinndagain is a live album recorded during American performances in 2001. Seven tracks and just over 40 minutes in length, it stands as one of the earliest recordings by Animal Collective. Their transcultural technological brand of post-postmodern tribalism is already in play here. Static opens the set for the first four-and-a-half minutes of "I See You Pan," only to be added to by solo voice, a simple childlike keyboard line, and harsh white noise that dissolves by the end of the cut's nearly 11-and-a-half minute length, only to be segued into the glorious "Pride and Fight," a transmutational campfire song if there ever was one. Using an organic Native American rhythmic approach -- via the sound of bare feet on a floor and a Björk-like sung line in the lyric, where high moaning chant is atmospherically treated with another voice, lapping over, slipping, and sparsely circling around, one can hear the skeletal formation of the sonics that went into creating Here Comes the Indian issued nearly two years later. It's quite beautiful; it feels natural and relaxed and is just out of its head, off its nod creative. By the time you get to the percussion orgy that is "Forest Gospel," you're ready for anything as listeners. One can only speculate as to what it might have been like to witness this performance. This is the terrain that the Virgin Prunes were trying to mine in their brief but entirely adventurous run. "Tell It to the Mountain," is another, briefer such exercise, full of off-the-rail drums and chanted vocals. The remaining three tracks are studies -- if you will generously allow them to be called that -- in free-form electronic and vocal freakout, and they simply don't work because the playfulness and musicality at the heart of Animal Collective is missing and the direction is far from focused. That said, Hollinndagain is worth the purchase price for the first two cuts -- "I See You Pan" and "Pride and Fight" alone, which will claim nearly half-an-hour of your day, or night, should you choose to allow them to transform you into a pre-verbal child again. This is an indulgence that's warranted, and among the first recorded attempts by this wild and wonderful group to go past the norms of all things in "alterative culture" in order to create an adjoining, but wholly different sonic universe. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
While critics found it easy to lump Animal Collective in with the freak folk scene after the strumming madness of Sung Tongs, Feels may cause them to revise their opinions -- slightly. First, this is more of a rock record, especially early on; the frequent cymbal crashes and pounding drums leave little doubt. Second, Feels has less of the aimless meandering of many artists in the freak folk scene. AC can, and do, explode at any second, and their whirl of musical ideas -- mostly naturalistic, such as intricate vocalizing or tribal drumming -- can become dizzying, but gleefully so, not in a disorienting way. (Imagine Fiery Furnaces condensing an entire album down to three minutes and you'll begin to understand the sound of the second song, "Grass.") So, while the folk tag has become less of an issue, freak still applies with no doubt. A core strength of the group is its ability to sound invigorated and bracing when exploring territory often surveyed in the past. Rock music can be a constraining form, especially at this late date, but the group sounds freer than ever before, almost as though they've never bothered with rock in their lives, and have only happened upon a bare few LPs before beginning their recording career. (If so, one of those would have been by Mercury Rev, although Animal Collective are much less patient in building to a climax -- "The Purple Bottle" has at least a dozen of them.) As on Sung Tongs, the first half is active, direct, and punchy -- nearly overloaded with production and ideas -- while the second half explores quiet, abstract moods, often with only a few tremulous vocals accompanied by autoharp. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
On Sung Tongs, their first record distributed by FatCat, the two-man Animal Collective come on like sun-scorched acid eaters gathered around the campfire, strumming and grinning while they weave their material out of cyclical singalongs and tight harmonies. Surprisingly, both for fans as well as new additions, that marks a much more accessible sound for a group that had previously probed the outer limits of prog and psychedelia. (Still, back to basics is the right place for a collective that released three albums in 2003.) Immediately called to mind here are the Holy Modal Rounders and, to a lesser extent, the Incredible String Band. While Animal Collective certainly don't share the intimate knowledge of folk music or the expert musicianship of the Holy Modals or the ISB, they do understand the importance of repetition in reaching altered states, and they indulge in many naturalistic post-production enhancements to get there. "Leaf House" and "Who Could Win a Rabbit" open the record with a cozy atmosphere created from soaring harmonies and Beach Boys-type bungalow percussion. From there, with only a few exceptions, Sung Tongs devolves into the loosest of jam sessions, a midsummer night's dream of pixilated picking in similar company with the lengthy mid-album interlude ("Green Typewriters") during the Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle. Although the duo didn't record nearly enough material to justify checking out quite so soon, Sung Tongs is a striking record, a breath of fresh air within experimentalist indie rock. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Informed in equal parts by acid-fried psychosis, crop-circle field recordings, and an elephants-on-the-loose circus thrash aesthetic, Animal Collective's fourth full-length album rests roughly at the meeting point between psychedelic, noise, and folk music. Here Comes the Indian begins gently enough with "Native Belle," a moody set piece that belies the album's clatter with 12 minutes of constrained rhythmic builds, drones, and squeaks. Things quickly explode with the searing "Hey Light," a lightning bolt of electrocuted brass and human wails that sends the album careening into psychoactive delirium. Since everything that follows -- from the shrieking brattle of "Two Sails on a Sound" to the enchanted tribal vocal exercises of "Slippi" to the slow-building celebratory scuttle of "Too Soon" -- feels similarly crazed, drug-induced, and apparitional, Here Comes the Indian makes for particularly lucid listening. Brash, crass, and texturally magnificent, this is well worth seeking out. ~ Mark Pytlik, All Music Guide
