Animal Collective\u2019s albums have been a scattershot affair since their debut album, Spirit They\u2019re Gone, Spirit They\u2019ve Vanished<\/i>. Their most famous albums, Feels<\/i> and Strawberry Jam<\/i>, could bring you in with their warm, poppish arrangements, then leave you at the side of the road with some freak folk arrangement that sounded like carnival music done by Mr. Bungle. <\/p>\n
Some of those experiments worked, but for those who enjoy a chorus and melody in their music, those detours could be annoying, especially considering the talent in the band. Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) has proven to be a phenomenal pop musician with his solo album Person Pitch<\/i>. Still, Person Pitch<\/i> could have sounded like it could have come out in 1967. For those craving a more contemporary sound, you just put up with the band\u2019s wild experimentation for eight albums. <\/p>\n
The same can\u2019t be said for their ninth album, Merriweather Post Pavilion<\/i>. At first listen, all of the elements that make Animal Collective so beloved to their cult base seamlessly converge. There are no \u201cpop\u201d songs and \u201cexperimental\u201d songs on Merriweather Post Pavilion<\/i>, just a collection of infectious, ambitious and blissful tracks. <\/p>\n
Bands known for embracing more than one music style have made these \u201cconvergence\u201d albums before. U2 merged their desire for an epic statement with their earnestness with The Joshua Tree<\/i>. Soundgarden merged their heaviness with their love for The Beatles on Superunknown<\/i>. And The Clash embraced their love of rockabilly, reggae and punk with London Calling<\/i>. <\/p>\n
All of the above albums were released to the dismay of some longtime fans. And most likely Merriweather Post Pavilion<\/i>\u2019s embrace of the mainstream may put off some of their hardcore fans. Those fans have reason to worry. If \u201cMy Girls\u201d lands on \u201cGossip Girl,\u201d you can pretty much guarantee the band\u2019s tour is going to be a string of sellout dates, filled with doe-eyed neophytes who have no clue of the depth of this band\u2019s experimentation — and protective fans who have been obsessively blogging about this band for the better part of this decade. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy Girls\u201d is one pop masterstroke in Merriweather Post Pavilion<\/i>. The second masterstroke, \u201cSummertime Clothes\u201d is even more infectious. Building on a climbing synth, Panda Bear and the avant garde-leaning Avery Tare (David Portner) harmonize in a fairly restrained buildup before an exuberant chorus of\u00a0 \u201cI want to walk around with you\u201d slams you, making you wonder why the hell no other band in recent memory has included this great, simple statement as a chorus. <\/p>\n
The two poppiest songs being included in the first half of the album may lead some to believe that it\u2019s front-loaded, leaving some of the more experimental (read: off-putting) tracks toward the end. While there may be some truth to that belief, that doesn\u2019t make the rest of the songs any less solid, they just take more time to sink in. <\/p>\n
This disc is not for cynics. The band embodies a lot of stereotypes of the Brooklyn-centered indie style rock music of this decade. The band is known for wearing masks in their photo shoots and most of their fans tend to be of the hippie\/hipster variety. One song repeats the line \u201cI\u2019m getting lost in your curls.\u201d In essence, this is a joyous album. If you\u2019re looking for a reason to dislike the album, you\u2019ll probably have no problem finding a fault. However, one unbiased listen of Merriweather Post Pavilion<\/i>, with the volume cranked, should win even the most hardened of cynics. <\/p>\n
There is no \u201cright\u201d place to listen to Merriweather Post Pavilion<\/i>, but I found a close to perfect place for my first listen. It was a bar\/music venue that hosted a listening party. The temperature was hovering in the teens with a nasty wind and the event wasn\u2019t heavily promoted. As a result, the album blared over the soundsystem to about two dozen regulars and Animal Collective fans. Heads bobbed during \u201cLion In A Coma,\u201d some quietly absorbed \u201cNo More Runnin\u2019,\u201d but for the most part, everyone had a smile on their face at some point. At the end of \u201cBrother Sport,\u201d the bartender went over to her MacBook and said \u201cWanna hear it again?\u201d <\/p>\n
Absolutely. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":29734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8255],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-41338","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-animal-collective","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41338"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41338"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}