Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

I would not call this a rave review:

Person Pitch is very much an end product of a variety of musical trends in whatever can be called indie rock in the early 21st century — big-sounding, absolutely dedicated to texture and sonic playfulness, and somehow aiming to make a lot of interesting ideas seem kinda flat.

I did give the album credit and highlighted what I felt were its best moments but I stand by my overall take.

I like animal collective

haven't heard this album tho

Whoever said this album was the progression from Person Pitch in the end was right because I have the same reaction to both albums -- "Oh -- that's it?" (Mentioning Burial is perfectly appropriate too because I feel the same exact way about his stuff!)

funny, portishead is what came to my mind

Imagine an album flatter than Person Pitch, with novel sonic ideas compressed behind gnomic declarations of domestic bliss.

lawn gnomic or wood gnomic

many xposts- as for "drawing on many things" ... well, I kinda can't stand Beach Boys vocal affectations normally, think of this WAY more as a post-rock record in the MBV/Seefeel inspired sense of things than anything which implicitly/explicitly reminds me of erm.. Kompakt? or even something on DFA (to really stretch it), freak folk?? god I went blue in the face trying to explain why I thought "Ys" was yadda yadda a commendable piece of art, but actually smelt real bad as a record you'd actually want to listen to.

and yet I quite like this album :/

so I don't think it's really a "sum of a load of cool parts" thing going on here, even if I understand why people might be sceptical, it's not a more than the sum of it's parts either... it's actually something else? that they're managing to make work and good on them for it.

calling this album "flatter than Person Pitch" which actually sounded like it was spliced straight onto tape, the tape set to play, and then sung over the top is about as close as you can get to an outright lie in describing a record's sound really :/

anyway, I'm glad my own cynicism has temporarily left me for a moment here (can't help wondering what spirit Ned went into the listening of this though?) Alfred's against-the-grain schtick is as tiresome as always... I'd best leave before I get insulting here.

So, "My Girls." I've listened to it loud and soft, I've listened to it on speakers and headphones, and if a big part of this band's appeal is that they're so sonically rich and expansive, why does it sound like someone's my first MIDI program decked out in a lot of reverb?

I'm really trying to understand how music that sounds so singularly punchless to me becomes so heavily praised (incl. by people who opinions i respect and usually understand). I'm not suggesting that they need to make it "rock" or use live instruments or something but could there not be a single disruptive, interesting sound on the track? As it is it floats by and I barely remember it was ever there.

one last thing, I don't know *quite* why people are freaking out over "My Girls" to the exclusion of nearly all the rest of the album (and the closer)? Just because it has a bit of boompty bump and a "whoo!" ?

I mean I like it too but apart from a dip near the 2/3rds mark, this record is pretty consistent right through in sound & songs I find....

so fandango what is your favorite song on the record.

If anything the density of this record (which I have only now heard in full) makes it slightly understandable why people be so anxious to hear a higher quality version (hopefully they'll buy the album). It's actually hard to work out what's going on in a track like "Also Frightened" at a reduced bitrate.

Meanwhile maybe it's the "flatness" of Person Pitch (which only becomes pejorative if you buy into meaningless, sclerotic critical notions of surface vs depth) that makes it such a great and interesting record, I find that quality of mirage-like insubstantiality quite enchanting. It's like zooming in on the heat-shimmer above the surface of the road on summer's day until all you can see are the waves and curves of the air itself.

Alfred's against-the-grain schtick is as tiresome as always

I can't wait to read what fandango-style going with-the-grain looks like.

maybe the opener, I mean that kind of sudden aggressive-ugly-sickly synthy overload (and the way it finally pulls back like the sea lapping away to remind you of the pretty sweet melody lurking underneath) is a pretty audacious way to open a record imo. I guess I like a record that has the confidence to really *make an entrance*.

Or "Bluish" 'cos I'm a soppy twat.

I like the first three tracks and "Taste," which has that key line ""Am I really all the things that are outside of me" that in its own way addresses the kinds of beauty Tim F saw in Person Pitch.

I feel like I'm going against the grain of myself by actually having positive feelings about this record when I haven't previously taken to this band... of course feel free to treat me as a dittohead whatever. I probably should have kept that thought in my head anyway, apologies.

can't help wondering what spirit Ned went into the listening of this though?

Meaning Person Pitch or Merriweather? If the former, quite neutral but vaguely hopeful in a 'well I hear this is supposed to be really good' sense; if the latter, admittedly wearied about hearing about them -- visions of people kowtowing before Stephin Merritt ten years back came too easily to mind -- combined with a certain sense of cosmic justice at the success of Roxymuzak's prank, so hearing this again six months down the road might well provide a different perspective. And inasmuch as I can't help but feel I've been down this overall road before on a different path with Loveless, some things are just the end product of time, place and who and where you are in life.

As for 'flatness,' pace my remark on PP, Alfred's addition and Tim's follow through -- my use of the word was, if anything, intended to talk about a sense of deflated expectations but also larger contexts, as I hope my quote as a whole was trying to convey, if too briefly. How others might use it in terms of the sound is up to them, and Tim's just given a good illustration of that; I was thinking in a different mindset. (And I firmly believe I can readily praise the group for an evident sense of range and knowing 'what time it is' in a broad sense without thinking the end results really work for me.)

I love Tim's descriptions as always but whatever critical notion I might be buying into (or not) PP just left me feeling a bit cheated really, in the same way tbh as the majority of other ILM-acclaimed sample-pop tends to do, be it super-brash and up in your face or subtly wistful.

NOT in the same way as something which I just plainly don't find as much of a magic combination as others seem to, for want of a better example, Burial again (tho I dig some tracks..)

that's cool Ned :)

I wondered if I'd sound too accusatory there "you don't like this what is wrong with you?" style... I just feel like I've maybe locked myself out of records in the past due to cynicism or misplaced expectations. God, I'll be into Xiu Xiu next at this rate ;-)

Oh I think most people do that at some point or another, doubtless I still do. The truly objective critic doesn't exist, for positive reasons as well as negative ones.

I'm kind of feeling odd with this whole discussion as like I hinted earlier, I think this is the first time I've had a serious well rounded opinion about a major release album in about 2/3 years, certainly the first time I've had a really positive feeling towards one.

I just feel it's a record that's very open, that suggests new possibilites and that feels very natural in the process. I mean I actually like the world that this record lives in also, the loose feel of it, the energy and positivity which doesn't cloy or isn't brow beating like so many big rock records.

I think the Beach Boys thing is a total red herring and it surprises me that people can like/dislike this record due to that. Sure the voices sound like the Beach Boys at times but that's just one element amongst many others.

I also think the electronic elements are well integrated into the whole album, as I said, really naturally mixed with the other elements, it's just a v good sort of tapestry feeling, not an awful dance-rock record or something. It just feels a band who've allowed electronic sounds to come into their music rather than forced the whole issue.

I agree with Fandango that it's a good record start to finish, kinda surprised by people only liking one or two tracks. I'm also in the same boat in that I've never heard any AC stuff before this.

I think the Beach Boys thing is a total red herring and it surprises me that people can like/dislike this record due to that. Sure the voices sound like the Beach Boys at times but that's just one element amongst many others.

It's ultimately the most distracting element, though -- and possibly the one most prone to weighing down reactions to it. I gather in some corners of the AC fan universe there's still a sense of resentment over my crack at the end of the PP review where I suggest it would have been more enjoyable as an instrumental. (I fully realize it would be a different release as a result, similarly to MPP, but that might be the point.)

to part reply to a post above, I don't know that I do think of this record as "rich and expansive" to be honest...

I'm still feeling them out for myself but part of the attraction for me is that a lot of the sonics are pretty cheap and un-prof sounding. It's kind of ramshackle to me, but they're using these tools to try and sound texturally overwhelming, not streamlined. It's a punk kind of way to tilt at lush-ness. And as far as 'expansive' goes, it often feels more ridiculously close, humid, dense as Tim already said (and yes 'close' in a personal way too. Records concerned with the domestic are often accused of blandness and flattening and no change here really... but when that aesthetic can be made to work, is there any problem? Life isn't all rock and roll). I guess reviewers have already said "tropical" 100 times too and that fits as well...

i might actually like this a bit if it sounded cheaper but the mix is so weird and then it's all like reverbreverbreverbreverb

It's ultimately the most distracting element, though -- and possibly the one most prone to weighing down reactions to it. I gather in some corners of the AC fan universe there's still a sense of resentment over my crack at the end of the PP review where I suggest it would have been more enjoyable as an instrumental. (I fully realize it would be a different release as a result, similarly to MPP, but that might be the point.)

― Ned Raggett

Voices are a dominant element, but the "sound like Beach Boys!" thing is both an overplayed card and a red herring.

I'm curious to see how significant the extra detail & clarity might actually be to me when my CD arrives. I'm not really expecting relevations, or to suddenly lose my mind completely in it the way I might have with that Kate Bush record a few years back though....

Lots of massed harmonies singing stuff like "I'm really lost in your curls" is guaranteed to make me grind my teeth into a powder, though, and ultimately why I can't like this band.

what's wrong with curls? some people look really nice with them.

Anyone with curls makes me doubt his/her motives.

Of course it's a red herring in many ways, the vocals aren't the music too, thank god, otherwise we'd be talking about the fucking Wondermints. But nonetheless, it's the reference point that's always going to crop up bar some radical revision of their style, and I rather think they've figured out the smartest move of all -- ie, not to care, and to go where their whim takes them.

(Oddly, Alfred's criticism just now makes me think more about how I don't like either the Polyphonic Spree or the Arcade Fire. Not about the curls, though, I like curls.)

This album makes me think about how much I disliked The Soft Bulletin.

I was going to mention Arcade Fire's earnestness (brow beating) as a reason why I like this record's relative understatement.

That Flaming Lips album has cast a very long shadow.

Ronan you really have to hear the Gang Gang Dance album.

I still have to hear that album too, all I know about them is that they were the Boredoms standins in NYC for Boadrum this year.

(Which now that I think about it makes me think that a possible positive role model for MPP would be Vision Creation Newsun -- earlier I was considering vague parallels, ie band established with a certain kind of earlier sound and focus gets to the point where they build up to a monstrously perfect album in a different but related vein that becomes *the* album for a good number of people from that point forward, and which works with electronic elements in a very 'natural' sense, for lack of a better word.)

What I heard of the GGD album was kind of neat tho i'm not sure i could put it in regular rotation.

It doesn't really sound like "massed harmonies" on that track though? I'd heard it more as a single vocal line, maybe a bit of multitracking and reverb, occasional back up vox. As Ronan says,quite understated to me!

Whatever the case, of anything on this record it's one of the least "wall of sound" tracks by miles, again I wonder if the learned idea of this record/band isn't overpowering the actual thing?

and it's far, far away from Flaming Lips/Polyphonic Spree/Arcade Fire territory thank f-ck.

That's an insult to the Lips!

Of course, I think the Lips and Mercury Rev are fundamental components to A.C.'s genome.

it is far away from that stuff in a lot of respects but my complaint about this album is the same as my complaint about the soft bulletin which is that they both "sound" (in the sense of the individual sounds that were chosen to carry the music) unbelievably dull.

The Gang Gang Dance album is amazing also! I've kind of avoided mentioning it in this thread because well... I don't want to get too hyped and/or spin off into extended or unjustified comparisons with this. And I also want to stay well out of bringing more vaguely unnecessary genre comparisons into play or dredge up old ILM indie+dance corpses w/r/t both of these when they stand alone as great records perfectly well without and actually almost transcending such cheap selling points.

i hadn't been really impressed with the gang gang dance stuff i'd heard, but then i heard a track mixed into one of dj/rupture's radio sets and was like "wow, what is this?"

xpost - I was thinking 'bad' lips if that helps :|

again I wonder if the learned idea of this record/band isn't overpowering the actual thing?

Always a struggle for any band trying to do something different, and it's something both band and audience would have to consider -- lord knows the band could have just locked into Elephant 6 whimsy territory and my reaction would be less equivocal and more 'die and rot.'

I think no more than 10 critics should be allowed to hear any given new album in any given year.

i think critics should be allowed to hear no more than 10 albums in any given year

Both of these claims are true.

I think no more than 10 critics should be allowed to hear any given new album in any given year.

How's this not true now?

I listened to the Gang Gang Dance album in the supermarket last week and it didn't instantly grab me. But I will check again. My listening habits are haywire lately compared to my usual, Three Six Mafia, endless gfunk, Miles Davis...David Lynch associated music.

i have heard like two thirds of this band's records, can someone point me out an actual moment which actually SOUNDS LIKE THE BEACH BOYS, not 'like the idea of the beach boys' or 'like they once heard a beach boys record' or 'conveying a similar spirit to the beach boys', i'd appreciate that

i mean darren hayman went on about them too but no one ever suddenly thought hefner's vocals were anything like the wilsonses