Merriweather Post Pavilion: Conceptual Review for a Conceptual Band

(image via)

Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion has leapfrogged reviews and landed headfirst in feature-length think-piece territory. What happens when something patently “not mainstream” hits mainstream acclaim? We don’t talk about the band, we only talk about the idea of the band:

Mark Richardson:

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.

Jasper:

I’ll say this now to get it out of the way because you’re obviously going to be bombarded with Animal Collective hype — I’m a tad disappointed by this album. Not in the sense that this isn’t their greatest album, because it is, but in the sense that they’ve taken away some of my right to be an elitist asshole. Merriweather Post Pavilion is accessible to people who would normally be scared off by Animal Collective‘s music. This is a band whose albums I play a lot and friends tell me “turn this shit off”. This allows me to be Pretentious Guy and lets me ridicule them for not hearing the brilliant pop song buried in the cricket noises, satanic yelping, backwards running water and wind chimes.

There is no weird on this album.

It’s eleven hit singles. And now you will probably listen to them and there’s nothing worse than you liking the same things I do.

Scotter (via e-mail):

So I’m finally listening to Merriweather Post Pav and must say that it actually makes good work music. I’m digging it so far.

“My Girls“ (buy)

Carles:

Where does Animal Collective realistically sit in this hierarchy of critical acclaim vs. pop appeal vs. actually selling albums? I feel like they are sort of like a ‘really funny, progressive comedy that got cancelled from cable TV’ in band format, except they are a band so they don’t get ‘cancelled’–they get the opportunity to move forward become more authentic, letting their fan base ‘grow’ with them.

When I first started listening to them, they had a smaller following, and playing them in my car for a group of friends was often met with a lot of ‘what is this krazie noise, yall?’s. Back then, AnCo was way more acoustic/conceptual/NOISECORE/lofi/etc. These days, they are a bit more electro conceptual tribal. Animal Collective uses progressive samples and instruments to make ‘modern pop music.’ Not every one is ready to embrace this concept. Not every one is able to say ‘OMG. they have the pop sensibilities of the Beach Boys’ because they probably don’t read+regurgitate music tidbits & opinions from the internet on a daily/weekly basis.

Matthew Perpetua:

They were on this kinda urban-hipster-hippie vibe that put me off a lot, and still does to a certain extent. But obviously, that vibe really connected with a lot of people, particularly people just a bit younger than me. And they had a genuinely new aesthetic, this sound you can’t really nail down except to say it sounds like Animal Collective—the way they were using electronic instrumentation in this way that was in line with this really vague notion of “jam bands.” Not even jam bands, per se, but like drum circles and campfire jamborees. They were somehow smuggling in all these things that had always been seen as deeply uncool into indie circles, and making it cool and acceptable and even a bit “avant garde.” I mean, if you fast forward to now, when they are a very big band, it’s sorta astonishing how they’re arguably the, indie rock band of this decade, the one group who legitimately brought in a new aesthetic for what we know as indie rock, and they do not rock at all, and they rarely play guitars. If you go back to the late ’90s, people were really angsty about guitars, and how they were inevitably at the center of indie music. And now we’re ten years later, and that audience is now totally in thrall of an album that is almost entirely keyboards, samples, drum machines and harmonized vocals. The acclaim for Merriweather is refreshing to me because you can’t really point to another record like it, at least outside the Animal Collective catalog. It’s a legit breakthrough for a band that came up with their own sound in a time when most artists seem to operate under the notion that “it’s all been done.” It makes me happy that people are excited about something that feels new.

Will Welch:

The thing about “Is Animal Collective the great band of our time?” is that it’s not a dumb question to ask, but it’s a dumb one to answer. That said, we could do it hypothetically. Assuming they are, why are they? For me, there are musical reasons, and there are perception reasons. By perception reasons I mean the way they have handled their career, their marketing, their press, how many albums they’re putting out, what their T-shirts look like, the places they play, what they play when they play… There is mystery at the heart of their music and their life as a band, and on both levels it’s an incredible project, a blinding success.

Carles:

Never underestimate the significance of branding. I think most people who are ‘really into Animal Collective’ don’t really understand branding/would tell you that ‘they are not a brand–they are just passionate musicians making art.’ They have done something relatively impossible–making a brand that is ‘authentic’ and ‘transparent’ and ‘immune to hype’ and ‘invincible against negative criticism’ and ‘opening up new artistic spaces which leave critics unable to evaluate it with an existing set of standards.’

One of AnCo’s best gimmicks is operating for ‘art’s sake’ as well as they can. Instead of ‘creating excessive blurbably content’, they usually let the Music New Meme economy generate their own memes about what AnCo is up to. They will definitely have an infinite life as an ‘acclaimed alt band’, but their core competencies don’t really mean that they will ‘blow up’ because only really ‘guitar rock n roll with male singer’ alt bands or ‘artsy girls who play multiple instruments and sing kinda kute songs’ can CROSS OVER.

If anything, AnCo is lucky to ‘crossover’ to people who don’t use the internet. This is kind of like the genre of FestivalBros/ drug users who listen to old music / weirdo old people who like new stuff that they think matches their weird personal brand. Just can’t imagine “Brother Sport” playing at a high school homecoming dance. As meaningful as you think it would be, it probz just won’t happen ever, yall.

Me:

Pop bands making experimental music is nothing new, and experimental musicians making pop music is nothing new, either. But MPP has hit some sort of Gladwellian tipping point that’s causing Animal Collective’s fans to collectively freak out — can you still enjoy the music if the brand’s tarnished? Or should more people be exposed to this to find out what’s new and important with music today? A lot of people seem to be making historical predictions about the importance of this album, as if the garage band of the future will rely entirely on indeterminate instrumentation and improvisational harmonies. Who knows, maybe kids 50 years from now will look back on rock bands with the same bemusement we do with the big bands of our grandparents’ generation? I have a hard time envisioning any sort of sudden impact, but what do I know.

Let me start over. It’s not fair to level the “nothing new” criticism on the pop vs. experimental music divide, as if they’re set quantities that can be mapped out on an X/Y axis. It is new. Refreshingly new. If anything, the appeal of MPP is that it’s as if Animal Collective took one look at that rigid X/Y graph and decided to head out in a different direction, on their own Z axis. Whether or not you like this album is beside the point, it’s whether or not it causes you to rethink what music could or should be. Maybe this album will just inspire a legion of awful AC knock-off bands at your local bars and clubs, or maybe it’ll cause those would-be bands to start thinking more about the importance of sound and catharsis instead of stylistic emulation. Or maybe Merriweather is just a really great album to listen to that just so happened to drop at a time when not a whole lot else was going on in the music world. After all, “Brothersport” is a great song, but there’s no way it will reach the cultural ubiquity of a song like “Young Folks” or “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).” The journalism about that song, however, might.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your theses.