February 9, 2009
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion I won’t even try to write something as robust or thought-provoking as Carles or Nick Sylvester have. It doesn’t suit me. As a critic I’ve never managed to say anything profound (though I do find myself beaming with pride—often alone in my room—upon keying some of my more clever puns). And even though, thanks to this record, it’s managed to become a genre that absorbs a great deal of my listening time, ‘concrete/soul/visual’ is not a genre permutation I’m especially comfortable dissecting. What I will say is this: there’s something about Merriweather Post Pavilion that makes me feel differently about my life than other records have in the past. It’s not pure happiness or deep sorrow, and it doesn’t make me laugh like other exceptionally crafted lyrical records do. In fact, there’s a side of me that thinks the lyricism of the album isn’t all that incredible to begin with—of course, the other side of me laughs and kicks that side’s ass when it thinks this way (dude are you serious!). No, this is a personal response to Animal Collective; it’s not smart or well-researched enough to be anything more. It’s just a statement of blind contentment, fulfillment and inexplicable comfort. I get all those things in scary, nostalgic waves when I listen to Merriweather Post. Even the name—given for the place where I saw my first ever concert and near where I grew up and experienced adolescence, along with the band themselves—carries with it a weird closeness for me. “My Girls” is captivating in its ability to marry complexity and simplicity on separate and uneven layers, the philosophy of each colliding across an apex that mimics the synapses of Brian Wilson’s drug-addled nervous system if it had the technology of today’s digital music at its disposable. “Summertime Clothes” fires me up like metal; and “Lion in a Coma” is as frenetic as anything the band has written, but its ‘seizurely’ tendencies are as neatly and carefully controlled as absolute zero. There are literally hundreds of moments between the first wispy electronic flutters of “In the Flowers” and the final repetitive numbness of “Brothersport” where I feel like a child—not a child in the traditional sense, but a child of experience and knowledge—even as an adult. Others make me feel established, mature, and omnipotent, like I’ve finally seen and heard and learned everything I’ll ever need. The in-between feelings are never weak or paltry, either: for some fifty minutes Merriweather Post Pavilion treats me like an emotional ragdoll, tossing my psyche back and forth between two polar versions of my own self-perception with total disregard for the way it’s destroying me. From crippling innocent youth to infallible wisdom, then back again. There are so many things about this record that I find impossible to describe; and where this might have driven me to be less satisfied with a particular record in the past, some completely unique and uncontrollable catalytic explosion happens in my brain when I hear this one. There are critics who become obsessed with determining the real meaning behind albums, spending their lives going crazy over the symbology of the paper inlay. And while those men and women eventually collapse under the genius of those who they canonize, I never felt sorry for them until I began to torture myself over Merriweather Post. I think the one great thing about my generation’s proliferation and instantaneous availability of new music is that it keeps most of us from becoming too enthralled in a single product. Sure, there have been other groundbreaking records written since the turn of the century. There have probably been many. But the point is not to sanctify a piece of new music or propel it to the echelon of greatest music ever, because discrepancy is unavoidable and worse, destructive to a piece of art. Rather, the point is to just enjoy a piece of art—music or otherwise—in the most honest and vulnerable way it can be taken. Only then does it become authentic, resonant and timeless. And therein lies the real beauty behind Merriweather Post Pavilion. It speaks to so many of us in a language we can’t read, but totally understand. I wouldn’t—and perhaps more importantly, couldn’t—change anything about any measure of it.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

I won’t even try to write something as robust or thought-provoking as Carles or Nick Sylvester have. It doesn’t suit me. As a critic I’ve never managed to say anything profound (though I do find myself beaming with pride—often alone in my room—upon keying some of my more clever puns). And even though, thanks to this record, it’s managed to become a genre that absorbs a great deal of my listening time, ‘concrete/soul/visual’ is not a genre permutation I’m especially comfortable dissecting.

What I will say is this: there’s something about Merriweather Post Pavilion that makes me feel differently about my life than other records have in the past. It’s not pure happiness or deep sorrow, and it doesn’t make me laugh like other exceptionally crafted lyrical records do. In fact, there’s a side of me that thinks the lyricism of the album isn’t all that incredible to begin with—of course, the other side of me laughs and kicks that side’s ass when it thinks this way (dude are you serious!).

No, this is a personal response to Animal Collective; it’s not smart or well-researched enough to be anything more. It’s just a statement of blind contentment, fulfillment and inexplicable comfort. I get all those things in scary, nostalgic waves when I listen to Merriweather Post. Even the name—given for the place where I saw my first ever concert and near where I grew up and experienced adolescence, along with the band themselves—carries with it a weird closeness for me.

“My Girls” is captivating in its ability to marry complexity and simplicity on separate and uneven layers, the philosophy of each colliding across an apex that mimics the synapses of Brian Wilson’s drug-addled nervous system if it had the technology of today’s digital music at its disposable. “Summertime Clothes” fires me up like metal; and “Lion in a Coma” is as frenetic as anything the band has written, but its ‘seizurely’ tendencies are as neatly and carefully controlled as absolute zero.

There are literally hundreds of moments between the first wispy electronic flutters of “In the Flowers” and the final repetitive numbness of “Brothersport” where I feel like a child—not a child in the traditional sense, but a child of experience and knowledge—even as an adult. Others make me feel established, mature, and omnipotent, like I’ve finally seen and heard and learned everything I’ll ever need. The in-between feelings are never weak or paltry, either: for some fifty minutes Merriweather Post Pavilion treats me like an emotional ragdoll, tossing my psyche back and forth between two polar versions of my own self-perception with total disregard for the way it’s destroying me.

From crippling innocent youth to infallible wisdom, then back again.

There are so many things about this record that I find impossible to describe; and where this might have driven me to be less satisfied with a particular record in the past, some completely unique and uncontrollable catalytic explosion happens in my brain when I hear this one.

There are critics who become obsessed with determining the real meaning behind albums, spending their lives going crazy over the symbology of the paper inlay. And while those men and women eventually collapse under the genius of those who they canonize, I never felt sorry for them until I began to torture myself over Merriweather Post. I think the one great thing about my generation’s proliferation and instantaneous availability of new music is that it keeps most of us from becoming too enthralled in a single product.

Sure, there have been other groundbreaking records written since the turn of the century. There have probably been many. But the point is not to sanctify a piece of new music or propel it to the echelon of greatest music ever, because discrepancy is unavoidable and worse, destructive to a piece of art. Rather, the point is to just enjoy a piece of art—music or otherwise—in the most honest and vulnerable way it can be taken. Only then does it become authentic, resonant and timeless.

And therein lies the real beauty behind Merriweather Post Pavilion. It speaks to so many of us in a language we can’t read, but totally understand. I wouldn’t—and perhaps more importantly, couldn’t—change anything about any measure of it.

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