Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

I saw Avey Tare* on the Subway. He had some newly purchased records and a weird-looking bundle of blankets or clothing.

*I could not actually identify him on sight as Avey Tare, I just recognized him as "I think that might be the guy from Animal Collective."

i don't know if it's just the mp3s i have or if these guys actually have no low end at all, but in any case they are way too in love with that upper-middle treble range. all that wind-in-the-willows babbling-brook shit, they need something on the bottom to keep it from just all washing away.

and i know that's the range they've always worked in, and i liked it early on when it was more clattery and less precious, but even the clattery stuff now to me seems wispy. it's like being assaulted by eggbeaters.

I can't deal with them. I keep trying (have been since Sung Tongs) but they just sound awful to me, they give me a headache inside seconds, and as much as I want to like them from all the descriptions, the reality doesn't have the melodies, hooks, or rhythms I feel like I've been promised. The last Panda Bear record was much more tolerable, but still... so thin, so irritating. My antipathy for them is so deep that I actually can't understand why anyone else would like them at all, which is pretty rare for me.

this got released on emusic last week by mistake

The last Panda Bear record was much more tolerable - to my ears this record is ultimately the logical conclusion (or next step, let's hope) of the sound cultivated on the Panda Bear record, so I can't really understand the basis of differentiation.

*of = "for"

The last Panda Bear is much less demanding of attention, much more low-key; it's earworms rather than bangers, it's amniotic rather than lysergic, it flows above you like liquid rather than flapping right in your face like a giant, colourful butterfly that's too close to see properly. It's still insubstantial, still all about treble, still laden with nasty vocal affects, yes, but it's not as keen to have your undivided attention.

sheesh

??

it's earworms rather than bangers - fair enough Mouthy, but I'll bet that "My Girls" sounds like Jesus shitting gold doubloons when played through your ultrapremium hi-fi gadgetry.

yes, i bet it sounds like a fancy version of shit

lol, but Jesus shits miracles.

maybe don't involve shit if you're trying to describe something good

thank you, I will hence refrain from using the phrase "good shit," lest I be mistaken for a coprophiliac.

i think with the above descriptions, nick's safely worked out why people like it and doesn't like it for those exact reasons. i kind of like the "butterfly" analogy and that's why i like a lot of the recent stuff at least. it's like looking at a jigsaw puzzle piece and trying to work out what the rest of the picture would look like i guess.

.. or a Cornershop fan.

this is weird because I agree with Nick that the last Panda Bear record was completely different from MPP, to the point where I am genuinely confused that people attempt to compare them; unlike him, however, I also really liked the last few 'proper' Animal Collective albums, making it doubly surprising that MPP does nothing for me.

i don't know if it's just the mp3

CLASSIC, 2009

The sound is quite similar, but the emotional tone is different. Some of Person Pitch sounds distressed or even mournful.

I. Love. This.

― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), Wednesday, January 21, 2009 7:54 PM (1 month ago)

One month on, I'd go as far as to say I absolutely adore this album. Despite what Nick says above, all I hear are hooks and melodies; hooks upon hooks, melodies upon melodies. I really can't imagine ever tiring of listening to it.

In contrast I have to offer my experience of it forcing me to flee Amoeba Records when I reencountered it again. Three tracks in over their PA system and I surrendered, finished shopping and left before it drove me crazier.

I love how divisive this album is among people with otherwise (seemingly) similar tastes.

Yes: I've given up being surprised about that now. So when I met up with an old pal and gig-going companion of many years in the pub last night and said: "Oh, listen, you'll love the new Animal Collective" and he winced and told me he couldn't fucking bear it, it wasn't a shock at all.

i told an old pal the exact opposite of that at an excellent juana molina show last night. he's been out of the country awhile and missed out on the whole lol rickroll and then merry christmas day leak. it's all been a nice distraction during some seriously fucking bleak times

If I understand correctly, then, you're pro-Juana and anti-Collective?

pro-juana and pro-collective

Thank you, Sickamous Mouthall (Scik Mouthy). What you said.

MPP II: the backlash - A+, would backlash again

i don't know if it's just the mp3s i have or if these guys actually have no low end at all, but in any case they are way too in love with that upper-middle treble range. all that wind-in-the-willows babbling-brook shit, they need something on the bottom to keep it from just all washing away.

and i know that's the range they've always worked in, and i liked it early on when it was more clattery and less precious, but even the clattery stuff now to me seems wispy. it's like being assaulted by eggbeaters.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Saturday, February 21, 2009 11:23 PM

It absolutely must be the mp3s. I listen to the CD in the car and it's a trunk-rattling affair.

Nick Southall OTM. That's all I'll say about this record for now (apart from the fact it does *absolutely* zilch for me barring, say, "In The Flowers", with its (the record's) prevailing air of not entirely disagreeable if thoroughly surface-level "look at the pretty colours!" burblement, an array of bright (monotonously so; EVERYTHING is spangled) clothes strung out on a linear washing-line). We can wait for the dismal rush of year-end plaudits to rouse any actual ire.

I guess I think they could've profitably shaved about ten minutes off the album.

(Cue response from Ned: "I guess I think they could've profitably shaved about fifty-two minutes off the album.")

Oh why stop there, a full hour. Negative time.

fuck, this is an album of flabby time. of leaving your watch at the door. Of irresistible washes of Kompakt Pop Ambient interrupted with shrieks and washes of sound I can't really hate this album considering I waited so long for it. I kind of love it, for all its obvious arrival at this point, for all its obvious balearic chanting shouting sampladelic arrival. for the way it makes the journey from sung tongs to feels resolve, for the way the bass bows out of brothersport and the vocals dip and swerve and everything goes blue.

you could take the whole thinga away and you'd be missing the point, the point is those flabby expanses of wasted time, of swerving peaks and long days filled with sunshine and no reason to go home.

and you'd be missing the point.

Or I could just listen to something else I actually liked. :-D Which I will do!

That does sound like fun! : )

My Girls sounds quite like The Tough Alliance :)

liking this but i also want a bonus version that takes all of the main vocals off and replaces them with fatter drums :/

wow this album sounds bad on mac speakers

How the hell can Nick and I be on the same page about anything.

wow this album sounds bad on mac speakers

yes it does. like there's tin cans caught in the fanbelt. (i know macs don't actually have fanbelts, but if they did.)

You guys must be using old Macs -- it sounds great on my two month old MacBook!

my macbook is a year old. but i don't really think the problem's with the speakers. i think animal collective just sounds like tin cans caught in a fan belt.

"I kind of love it, for all its obvious arrival at this point"

yep, makes me wonder how the next record will sound.

so i see this thread is in the big backlash phase..
this record will be more objectively appreciated from 2010 and forward, when all the buzz will eventually end.
in the meantime, i think it's good, not as good as feels/sung,but still

sort of understand the perception that this is a treble/midrange album with no low end. though there's a big bass pulse in a lot of tunes, it often sounds grafted on, like a decorative afterthought. also, though i liked MPP a lot up front, i'm finding that it doesn't reveal much beyond what it first gives away. not a record of unexpected depths (despite the promo art). this isn't a complaint so much as an observation -- i still like it, but i suspect people will be a lot less enthusiastic about it by year's end.

yeah the brightness of their sound didn't bug me as much on feels for some reason, and i really actually like the skittery quality of some of the older stuff. but on this one it seems overdone to me.

all the reasons for the question: what happend to AC in this record? are in My Girls lyrics

so i see this thread is in the big backlash phase..

This leaves 10 months for the counter-backlash to take hold before the 2009 best-of poll.

saw these guys live last night. they sounded tired, i felt old.