Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Maybe you’ve heard of Animal Collective. Perhaps you’re well accustomed to their cluttered, chaotic sound. Or it could be possible that Animal Collective has been a group that you simply missed, just catching a hint of their sound here and there. You might be one of those people who fell in love with AC’s way of turning routine tedium (like coming home late) into marvelous spectacle, or found them to be irritating or just plain silly. Merriweather Post Pavilion is not going to change your mind on the band, regardless of what you feel. They are still doing what they’ve always done, but never has it come together so well.

Primarily, MPP reinforces your opinion of the band one way or the other since it is essentially a synthesis of everything they did best on their previous projects. If you have not listened to Animal Collective, then prepare to be a changed listener of music. While this ninth LP is the band’s most accessible album, there still remains plenty of unexpected moments, with harmonies and rhythms tumbling all over each other and sputtering percussion, only to burst into a recognizable, almost poppy riff. As always, it comes off deliberate, without a hitch. Be warned: if you did not like this sort of thing on Strawberry Jam or Feels, then you are not going to find much to enjoy here.

AC has a way of going through a laundry list of everyday phenomena, checking each off one-by-one and turning them all into blissful, wild adventures. At times they are even prescriptive, offering up advice on how to best turn the mundane into the wonderful, the simple into the magnificent. At points on MPP, you sense a dementia coming through that skips back and forth from agony to euphoria. The deranged, whirling melodies and sparkling synths often coupled with nonsense lyrics showcase some of the more bizarre tendencies of Animal Collective. They get you tapping your foot before you know why. Their nightmarish, frantic loops slip into something comfortable, happy even.

A hypnotic album with a cover as mesmerizing as the music inside, MPP’s opening track, “In the Flowers,” is a mystical song with a tumbling meter in the verse, leading to a frenzied chorus that reminds us that Animal Collective has not forgotten how to switch from dissonance to mania at the drop of a hat. “My Girls,” the following track, highlights Panda Bear’s (a.k.a. Noah Lennox) desire of the simple life, with Geologist’s (Brian Weitz) samples plowing away, and Avey Tare (David Portner) providing his brand of harmony. This track will likely be a favorite of many. “Also Frightened” reveals the more demented, carnival styling present in the album. “Summertime Clothes” makes you feel like you’re walking around watching people have fun, and it sounds like summer. Admittedly, seasonal-sounding music is ubiquitous and easily created, and is certainly not a new thing for Animal Collective, but here it resides with their trademark whimsy and joy.

These four wonderful songs only serve as the album’s beginning. As it progresses, the track list starts to sound more like “older” Animal Collective, with less toe-tapping and more hypnotism (see: “Daily Routine”), but they will still catch you off guard with a rhythm right out of an adult contemporary hit (see: chorus of “Bluish”). As a whole, the album is a synthesis of the seemingly contradictory: The lyrics pine over the basic and existential, while the melodies and music are, in a word, insane. And this fact sums up why we all love Animal Collective: they show us that the mean can still be wildly fun.

For those who can appreciate the brilliance of Animal Collective, then Merriweather Post Pavilion will only solidify their standing at the top of your play count. The album is 55 minutes of pure enthusiastic dementia. Ultimately, much like In Rainbows, MPP displays a heads-above band at their absolute finest.

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