Animal Collective's "Merriweather Post Pavilion"
One-Time Freak Folks Deliver Their "Pet Sounds"
Jun 22, 2009
There is no such thing as a grey area where Animal Collective is concerned. Their music is incredibly divisive, full of unsettling screams and shrieks, squalls of weird electronic noise, peals of distorted sound.
These are the only things that people on the negative end of that divisiveness hear, though. Buried in the mix of every Animal Collective track is a genuine pop song. The listener may have to dig a bit, but it’s always there.
Take “Peacebone,” opening track and first single of 2007’s Strawberry Jam, for instance. The song begins with a cacophonous and foreboding whirl of clicks, blips, and buzzes that, before long, is wrangled into order by a driving beat and transforms into a buoyant, catchy calypso-style number. This despite the punctuating monster cries throughout.
Merriweather Post Pavilion finds the band operating less in the freak-folk or noise pop modes with which they are most frequently associated. Instead, the songs are bright and shiny, accessible and infectious.
Here Comes the Sun
It becomes immediately apparent that Merriweather Post Pavilion is a spring- and summertime album. The pulsing thrum that opens “In the Flowers” gives way to warm, arpeggiated guitar chords while water drips in the background, the sound of a thaw. But the whole thing explodes into noise at the halfway mark: thumping beat and sun-seared electronics signal the arrival of something big and bright.
“In the Flowers” melts seamlessly into first single “My Girls,” its twinkling electronics underscoring the beautiful interplay of vocals by Avey Tare (David Portner) and Panda Bear (Noah Lennox). It is melody and harmony distilled to purity.
The whole of the album follows suit. Incandescent “Summertime Clothes” filters Avey Tare’s vocals through an insectile buzz during the verses which makes the chorus, already one of the year’s most giddily jubilant, that much more so.
Meanwhile, songs like “Daily Routine” (a droning, reverb-drenched, psychedelic shoegaze number) and “Lion in a Coma” (with its stuttering, pitch-distorted vocal delivery) hearken back to the days of Animal Collective past, indulging in more experimental methods and proving the group isn’t simply watering down the music to reach a wider audience.
Album standout “Brothersport” especially embodies this approach. The high-tempo Beach Boys-esque number is easily the catchiest of the album’s tunes, until about the 1:27 mark, where it descends into droning noise, peppered with shouts and sure to alienate those expecting immediate payoff. However the tumult gives way to a bright, wide-eyed outro, replete with jittery, cascading electronics and a contagious, ecstatic vocal refrain.
The Joys of Noise
The thing that makes Animal Collective so intriguing is the band's obsession with pure sound. Their music is almost childlike, in the way kids bang on pots and pans to see what noises they make. It is this juvenile wonder at and admiration of sound that makes each of their songs so captivating and brilliant.
While no less experimental than Strawberry Jam or 2004‘s Sung Tongs, Animal Collective have refined their aesthetic significantly on Merriweather Post Pavilion, creating an album of songs that are simultaneously cerebral and accessible. One could easily say it's their best yet.
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