With their constantly evolving sonic identity, in-your-face vocal mannerisms, and open-ended ideas about what their music might "mean," Animal Collective seem designed to inspire obsessive fans and vociferous detractors in equal measure. Merriweather Post Pavilion, their latest full-length, has been anticipated to an almost ridiculous degree, with blogs and message boards lighting up with each scrap of new information or word of a possible leak. No one who's been looking forward to it should be disappointed. Everything that's defined the band to this point-- all those strands winding through their hugely diverse catalog-- is refined and amplified here.
Since their inception, Animal Collective have wandered the territorial edges of music, scoping out where boundaries had been erected and looking beyond them. They've punctuated perfectly likeable indie rock songs with bleating vocalizations. They've seeded pretty instrumentals with irritating noise. They've juxtaposed West African rhythms and melodies cribbed from British folk. They've stayed on a single chord for 10 minutes. But Merriweather feels like a joyous meeting in a well-earned, middle place-- the result of all their explorations pieced together to create something accessible and complete.
Although it will be tagged as Animal Collective's "pop" album, Merriweather Post Pavilion remains drenched in their idiosyncratic sound, a record that no one else could have made. The album is named for a Maryland venue that last year played host to Santana, Sheryl Crow, and John Mayer, but its songs won't be heard on the radio, and besides, Animal Collective's M.O. requires them to exist outside of rigid formats. Nonetheless, they've found a natural way to integrate the sing-along melodies, sticky hooks, and driving percussion that have long been hallmarks of celebratory popular music.
Animal Collective's two vocalists, Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) and Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear), have never sounded better together, and the way their styles complement each other is the story of the album. On the one hand you have Panda's straightforward melodies, his fuzzy, head-in-the-clouds dreaminess, and his instinctual trawl through pop music history. The tracks that favor his songwriting typically have an underlying sense of drone, with everything moving forward along a line in relation to some subliminal center: They begin, then build, expand, and contract. Tare, meanwhile, tends to work within a more classic pop structure, with clear bridges and snappy choruses, greater harmonic development, and a sharper lyrical focus. Here, he reins in the blurting vocalizations that he's so often used as punctuation (the hardcore faithful might miss this unhinged emoting just a little). Both songwriters are on exactly the same page and, working with sonic spelunker Brian "Geologist" Weitz and producer Ben Allen (no Josh "Deakin" Dibb this time), they've found a sumptuous musical background for their most accomplished songs.
Merriweather is the kind of album on which any song could be someone's favorite, but two will likely reign as the choice picks: "My Girls" and "Brother Sport", both of which leaked prior to the record's release, contain the album's most effervescent moments, drawing from the communal energy of the group's astonishing live show. "My Girls" grows from a synth-speckled, half-speed intro into a booming electro-pop burner with handclaps and deep bass-- a towering edifice of sound trailed by long wisps of West coast harmonies. The Afro-Brazilian-flavored "Brother Sport" moves from one chanted melodic nugget to the next before building to a huge swirl of psychedelic sound that encompasses rave sirens and immersive tribal drums.
But these obvious peaks would have less resonance if not for the more subtle moments. The oblong architecture of "Daily Routine" hearkens back to the band's less stable earlier days, as it moves appealingly from an awkward organ-based mid-tempo number to a long, droney coda that has the ego-pulverizing bliss of shoegaze. The surging thrust of distortion and drumkick that propels "Summertime Clothes" starts with an almost militaristic pomp, but the song soon reaches a place of pure sweetness with a simple chorus hook ("I want to walk around with you") that could have come from any point in the last 100 years. Similarly out-of-time sentiments mark "Bluish"-- lines like "I'm getting lost in your curls," or, "Some kind of magic in the way you're lying there"-- and the music has the airy ease of 1970s soft-rock that weirdly winds up a little disconcerting. And then "Also Frightened" has the dislocated swoon of first-wave psychedelia, a "See Emily Play"-style mediation on the small insanity of childhood softened with billowing layers of voices.
The lyrics focus on the body, basic human connection, the need to take care of oneself, the puzzle of existence. Where the churning electronic sound, with its fizzes and echoes and underwater cast, brings to mind altered states and the confusing gap between the familiar and the strange, the words seem like a running commentary on the essential mystery of being alive. Animal Collective don't tell stories, and their music rarely has characters; there's little clever wordplay and fewer money lines you'll repeat later on. Rather, the words reinforce the sense of vulnerability that cuts through the music, and wind up being an essential component on an album that oozes confidence from every pore.
Music obsessives talk a lot about originality-- whether it's important, or why having a new sound should or shouldn't matter. In recent years, some fantastic albums have turned a number of people off for being retreads, which has sparked some interesting discussions. This album, which finds Animal Collective completely owning their unique sound, feels like the crucial next step in that conversation. What they've constructed here is a new kind of electronic pop-- one which is machine-generated and revels in technology but is also deeply human, never drawing too much attention to its digital nature. It's of the moment and feels new, but it's also striking in its immediacy and comes across as friendly and welcoming. Animal Collective have spent the decade following their own path, figuring out what their music is capable of while also working to bring more listeners into their world. On Merriweather Post Pavilion, their commitment has paid off tremendously.
