Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
This is what Animal Collective do well - starting with an idea and building it until just the right moment until it bursts.
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'Merriweather Post Pavilion' is probably the most hyped indie release since TV On The Radio's 'Dear Science' arrived late last year. Message boards have been flooded with those searching for leaks, or those boasting of having already found and downloaded the record; almost every broadsheet and music monthly has featured an admiring interview and adorned the record with many a star. What of those with limited exposure to Animal Collective so far though? This reviewer has only heard the Panda Bear solo record 'Person Pitch' and found it at times engaging but at others limited in melodic invention and a bit of a chore.
The Animal Collective sound is a dense beast but can be split broadly into three main influences; the joyous innocence, musical invention and complex harmonies of The Beach Boys, electronic sounds and beats, and tribal African chants and rhythms. 'Merriweather...' is being billed as their pop album, with an emphasis on accessibility and statements to the effect that no track is longer than six minutes. The term pop needs to be taken into context here - this may be Animal Collective doing pop but only one track is shorter than four mintues and the sheer depth of the record is incredible - most of it is pretty much impenetratable for the first couple of listens. However, it's after these first few spins that certain tunes start to unravel and things get properly interesting.
'My Girls' opens with shimmering spirals of electronic beeps and whirrs which are soon joined by those reverb-laden vocals, and once the drums kick in fully there is a wonderful sense of innocent joy. This is what Animal Collective do well - starting with an idea and building it until just the right moment until it bursts, with Panda Bear singing that "I don't mean to seem like I care about material things, like social status/ I just want four walls and a door with slats for my girls". You don't know quite whether this is electronica, pop or world music and it doesn't matter anyway.
'Also Frightened' is less about the simple euphoria of 'four walls, a door and girls' and instead follows a dronelike path of mysterious atmospherics into a claustrophobic sense of paranoia. "Are you also frightened?" sings Panda Bear and Avey Tare. Well maybe a bit! The demented synth-led bounce of 'Summertime Clothes' with its repeated refrain of "I want to walk around with you" is another highlight, and because of the uptempo nature of the track the layers and layers of sound are less stifling. This combination of simple lyrics and complicated music ("put on your dress that I like/ makes me so crazy I don't know why" - 'Bluish') marks the band out as genuine nu-hippies. This is what the Sixties would have sounded like if they had the technology of the 21st Century, and it is very much a record of the 21st Century, one that relies equally on technology and traditional songwriting to create something that it very much its own creation.
'Daily Routine' is full of mechanical whirrs and dream-like twinkles and sounds very much like a soundtrack to a Philip K. Dick novel. 'Brother Sport' is a great way to close the record, opening with some tribal chanting before it morphs into a kind of rave-esque instrumental section before we're back into the chanting. It's the record's more danceable moment, as it isn't hamstrung by some of the more awkward beats on display. Someone needs to remix this fast and get it on at your nearest indie disco.
The musical density of the record does get wearing after a while though, and although I'm sure 'Merriweather...' is more giving than most records in terms of repeat listens, some tracks would benefit from being given a bit of space, and some elements will remain buried without the requisite room to breathe. 'Lion In A Coma', for example is four minutes, but seems more like double that; the song not really having anywhere to go and as such ending up in the bracket of dreary repetition rather than any kind of hypnotic bewitchment.
This aside, the record is an impressive statement and already seems to have broken the band through to a new level. It is however still unlikely to move Animal Collective towards the mainstream in the way 'Yoshimi' did for The Flaming Lips, but whether 'Merriweather Post Pavilion' will remain as loveable as it is impressive over time will remain to be seen.
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