Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

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.

i hope they're bored of playing the same songs over and over again. i like this album more and more every time i listen to it, but it's about time they change it up

I saw them last week and was blown away. I like the new album fine, but seeing them live made me like it more.

it's about time they change it up

Why, are you seeing them at every show?

I'm rather looking forward to the "tired" setlist with all the "hits" as it's rather unusual for them to do.

Anyone see them last night in London?

It was like seeing Ozric Tentacles at a free festival, they should have gotten The Enid to support.

Yeah.
Thought they were pretty great. Esp start, Lion in a Coma into My Girls, into Summertime Clothes. Pretty much loved it, but never seen them before so don't know if this was their 'usual' kind of show or not.

I woz there!

It was great, but again, I'd never seen them before and only know a couple of the records.

I get yr Ozrics ref. It kind of reminded me of seeing the Orb in 1992, but I think that was just the giant glowing white globe suspended above the stage.

Anyway, it was WAY more electronic than I was expecting (although I shouldn't have been surprised) and there were just great chest-shaking bass whoomps everywhere and loads more reverb and FX on the vocals than on record. Just totally exhilerating disorientating stuff.

Shame the crowd were so diffident.

so I finally got to spend some time with this record, I was out of the country during the whole leak/hype/rickroll merriment and too busy to listen during the backlash phase. I like it more than Strawberery Jam for sure, but it all seems downhill after Summertime Clothes because it is front loaded like crazy. The jew's harp on Lion In A Coma is questionable, the last song is like an AC parody, and daddy issues recur throughout, but the first four tracks make it all worthwhile.

oh, youre just in phase one.thats not the end of the story:
wait till you get tired of track 1-4, than discover the middle section of the record and think it's great,and than (phase 3) get tired of the whole thing and neglect it till next year, when youll miss it again.

I dunno 'bout that but I will certainly continue to throw the record on for a while to come. No More Running is also v nice, I think the rest of the record is way stronger than SJ. I'm not sure what I think about the whole low end issue discussed above.

"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"

kinda otm

it all seems downhill after Summertime Clothes because it is front loaded like crazy

I agree generally, but track 5 is the album's best so no way does it go downhill after "Summertime Clothes," not quite yet.

Strawberry Jam highly underrated, btw.

"bluish" grows on you after a few listens, once the very wilson boys vocal harmony in the chorus bridge sinks in. that is a gateway song to zeno's phase 2

i dont know how i feel about the "doesnt reveal much beyong what it first gives away" comment(s). every song is so god-damned layered and dense i'm constantly discovering new aspects of a beat or melody that had hitherto gone unnoticed (or at the very elast unappreciated). most of the melodies are really accessible it's true but they're hard to get bored of, and my favourites are constantly shifting positions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/feb/06/simon-reynolds-animal-collective

I don't care much for Reynolds' music taste, for the larger part, and I find some of his thoughts muddled with nonsense ("black capitalism" as an economic theory in a discussion about Motown?) but his article on AC reminds me of his article on Vampire Weekend: thought provoking and insightful, even if I think he's possibly reading too far into things at times.

What I enjoy about Simon Reynolds is that he's always got a theory for why something is happening in music. No dots are ever left unconnected.

I quite enjoyed reading that article, and I think he makes some interesting and relevant points about middlebrow, etc.

But MPP is still fucking horrific.