Animal Collective - Merriweather POLL Pavilion

i cant even

you were supposed to use the 'in rainbows' tracklist

"Summertime Clothes" all the way

"in the flowers", but the earlier live version of "brother sport" is best

"My Girls"

"My Girls" by a longshot for me, too.

I'll chime in for "Daily Routine" myself.

summertime clothes vs. daily routine vs. lion in a coma vs. no more runnin

summertime clothes wins for me

my girls

THE LINE in my girls pretty much ruins it for me.

Which line?

do u have the internet?

this line

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd120/hipsterrunoff/ancobros2.jpg
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd120/hipsterrunoff/ancobros.jpg

jesus motherfucking christ

Pretty sure I'll be the only one voting for Taste. The overlapping vocals are great.

Could be any of them, really. Tempted to go for Also Frightened, just because of the way that refrain comes in (and because I bet very few others will), but will probably be between My Girls and Summertime Clothes.

brothersport, but maybe i should have voted for bluish.

it's too soon for this .. cant vote

"Calm sense of euphoria and wonder" indeed.

'My Girls' just 'cause it's amazing when it comes on in the pub and you see folks grinning their faces off and singing along. Beautiful. Although 'Brother Sport' is on the same level, and 'Daily Routine' is bonzer.

Despite the haters, I still think this whole album is pretty ace.

I know. I'm surprised Lex hasn't shown up here to spit his criticism again. And again. And again. But, y'know:

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/6070/hatersgonnahatec2995252.gif

this album is really good, but people are rightfully shy to admit it because

'My Girls' just 'cause it's amazing when it comes on in the pub and you see folks grinning their faces off and singing along.

It's a toss up between 'Bluish' and 'Brothersport' for me, although Bluish was the first one that I started to like. IT's fun to mix four-on-the-floor techno in with 'Brothersport'.

'My Girls' just 'cause it's amazing when it comes on in the pub and you see folks grinning their faces off and singing along. Beautiful. Although 'Brother Sport' is on the same level, and 'Daily Routine' is bonzer.

― Dingy Boat McCrap Crap (Mister Craig), Sunday, 17 May 2009 11:07 (12 hours ago) Bookmark

What kind of pubs are you people going to?!

Bluish today

How about tomorrow?

woke up to 'Lion In A Coma' on a flight to Prague. combined with the Uma Thurman-like stewardess, it gave me wood.

What kind of planes are you people flying on?!

lol

They're on higher planes.

"paper planes"

voted for "paper planes".

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Nice results, about what I expected.

It's kind of a shame No More Runnin didn't get any votes. I guess people voted for the bangerz instead, but NMR has that lovely mellow Lindsey Buckingham ballad feel, with amazing harmonies. I could have voted for any of em except Taste and Also Frightened perosnally

"Also Frightened" is a lot better than this poll gives it credit for being.

I've just had a walk in the luxembourg garden (in paris) listening to MPP, under the glorious sunny blue sky, with kids playing around, pretty boys and pretty girls sunbathing under the trees and palm trees and boy how that felt good...
totally agree with the first part of the poll but yeah I would have put "also frightened" and "taste" around "bluish" and "summertime clothes" level.

"Also Frightened" = their best song, to date.

I do feel a little sorry for Also Frightened. Parts of it are really quite lovely.

always frightened is only good sometimes. but sometimes it is good.

It's stuck between two of the big "singles" on the record, so it has a lot to live up to.

fantastic, fantastic song. you can only pick one in these polls though ...

also frightened >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> summertime clothes (just so y'know...)

plus:

no more runnin >> lion in a coma >>>>>>>>>> summertime clothes

Yeah, I really can't believe "No More Runnin" didn't get a single vote!

nope, "Summertime Clothes" is the best song on this album!

agree to disagree, I guess?

"Daily Routine" > "Summertime Clothes" >>> "Also Frightened" >>>>> "My Girls"/"Brothersport" >>>>>>> the rest.

also frightened = barrett-era floyd

summertime clothes = zombies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEh2dhkWiUA

(via HRO)

delete world imo

it's in other thread iirc

man, can't keep up w/ the memes. there it is. thanking you

Bluish is miles away the best smh

bluish is good, but i think the right song won this poll. bluish is the least representative song on this album, it doesn't sound like animal collective the way my girls does. also the line "i'm getting lost in your curls" is kind of blegh, and sounds unnatural sung by avey tare for some reason.

classic album though.

it doesn't sound like animal collective

otm but we disagree on which way it cuts, I suppose

yo it's obv guys eyes

I really need to hear this album one of these days.

how about right now. it's on spotify. livepost your reactions.

Nah Bluish

I have cooled on this album a LOT tho

...actually, I think I ended up voting for Also Frightened which is a close.second

...actially, I want to hear Also Frightened right now so maybe thats the best

I listened to In the Flowers in the car this morning. It's a good opener.

the ac had such a fucking classic run pretty much from their inception up to merriweather. every subsequent record was surprising and amazing in its own right. it was really like they could do no wrong. could merriweather be their scary monsters? eeeeeep :x

Couldn't disagree more. The band was always trying out weird stuff, which they should be commended for, but they made a lot of duds. Danse Manatee and Campfire Songs are the worst, but there is a lot of uninspired music on their albums, or stuff that is hampered by bad mastering or sequencing or stuff like that. Plus, Centipede HZ is their third-best album, after Here Comes the Indian and Strawberry Jam.

these days I would vote No More Runnin tbh

i don't know man. name some duds, what's mastered poorly, what's sequenced wrong?

Well, pretty much everything is mastered poorly? Sung Tongs is killed by the sequencing, in my opinion. College is such an anti-climax after twelve minutes of Visiting Friends, and the last three songs are way too samey. Feels also tapers off after such an energetic start. MPP is also a lot of great tracks that never coalesces into more than it's parts.

Agree that Bluish is by far the best on MPP, which really isn't a good album by any stretch of my imagination. Sung Tongs, prospect hummer and Campfire songs were their classic period.

This fucking song.

I hate a lot of songs, but few actually make my physically queasy. This one does.

how do y'all feel about this? (fwiw from the tour they debuted my girls and many of the songs on MPP, arrangement and instruments used are very close to my girls)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v71PA3l0SeY

It's just annoying that 'My Girls' is considered the benchmark AC song. They just got more and more cloying and irritating as they went on didn't they?

did we ever work out what 'adobe slabs' were?

Why The Worst Lyric On “Merriweather Post Pavilion” Is Resonating With Everyone

xpost:

Adobe slats is what it is: slats that are made out of adobe.

Alfred OTM, though.

I would vote for that approx. 1 minute interlude between Guy's Eyes and Taste.

That horrible wedding video that went viral certainly didn't help.

it's weird how much i ended up avoiding this band....i had sung tongs on CD and it was pretty decent danielson famile type eccentric xian summer camp goofy psych bongo stuff but never heard much later

As thin as gruel and as uplifting as an elevator to the second floor

this is funny but v true

i remember when this album came out and this song came out. the next day i was in a club and this song started and ppl were like "oh shit here we go!" but what followed was a minute or so of forced dancing then everyone walking away until they put on Bowie or Prince or whathaveyou. it was dancefloor killer.

Adobe is one of the more basic substances used to build houses and has been around for thousands of years, so it seems like what's going on inside the house is more important thn its actual appearance. the one line of note I find interesting is that they refer to their social status as a "material thing." maybe that classification ...

As thin as gruel and as uplifting as an elevator to the second floor

this is funny but v true

i remember when this album came out and this song came out. the next day i was in a club and this song started and ppl were like "oh shit here we go!" but what followed was a minute or so of forced dancing then everyone walking away until they put on Bowie or Prince or whathaveyou. it was dancefloor killer.

― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, May 3, 2018 9:50 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not a dance song. go to better clubs

oh i stopped going to club altogether like over 5 years ago. keep in mind this was in a dive bar that plays the usual stuff and indie rock.

this album is pretty overrated but i still love my girls despite the corny lyrics

cant imagine it really working on the dancefloor though, like maybe without the long intro

maybe this is AC's big trick. rather than something like Kraftwerk, this is electronic music you CAN'T dance to.

hard to pick a best song tbh, the album is so stacked and works really well as a piece. gun to my head tho it's either Guys Eyes or Brother Sport

*rolls eyes* so it's taken y'all ten years to realise what some of us were saying at the time huh

Feels like the pro and anti-AnCo are the same as they were ten years ago.

pro and anti-AnCo camps. I mean.

ac jumped the shark for me when they went all ritalin hyped N high energy circa Centpidede HZ

fuck that's music to make you wanna gouge yerself

hot pocket take: alfred is OTM, another thing that bugs me about this song is how it celebrates a facile gentrified life which is equivocal with social status...it's an insincere song and an anthem for nihilists, but alfred pointed all this out i'm sure.

I guess xp

this album wasn't as discouraged as I wish it had been. now you have stuff like the new Palm album, revisiting its hateful showy tunelessness and arch polyrhythmic fuss as if that's what indie is supposed to be these days

fully aware that this opinion will irk some of you but ilm is nothing if not a melting-pot of opinions. and hey I just advertised the Palm album to MPP's advocates. get on that shit -_-

alfred is OTM, another thing that bugs me about this song is how it celebrates a facile gentrified life which is equivocal with social status..

^^^ this

I don't think My Girls celebrates or yearns for a gentrified life. "I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls" = I just want the bare minimum - shelter - to be with and protect my family.

oh come on that is the most transparent false modesty in pop history

the Palm record does not sound like MPP, more like Strawberry Jam or late 00s bands like Abe Vigoda.

xp is it?

The big problem when Animal Collective crossed over in the year end list bonanza was suddenly all these people interpreting whatever Animal Collective had to say about anything.

also assuming that the song is completely autobiographical, which is a mistake imo. if anything MPP could be criticized for fully embracing the cultural tourism of tribalism more so than any other AC record. the song that immediately follows My Girls, Also Frightened, is all about living in the jungle and shit. I always read the lyrics as very primal, as if spoken from the perspective of early man. Which like I said has potentially problematic implications, but it's definitely not a pro-gentrification song.

The big problem when Animal Collective crossed over in the year end list bonanza was suddenly all these people interpreting whatever Animal Collective had to say about anything.

― Van Horn Street, Thursday, May 3, 2018 2:23 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, this is OTM. they're storytellers, they've never written a message song, a lot of their lyrics (esp. avey tare) are on their face laughable/silly. I think the only topic they've ever written about with any kind of depth or insight is love.

They make strange campfire songs about being kid tigers, bee and canoes and even something about how a bat will fly and the dude writes this one song about how his dad passed away and how he wants to be a good father and people call him insincere and a gentrifier, wonder if they ever stood a chance with some people.

his second solo album Young Prayer is entirely about the death of his dad yeah, plus references in "Brother Sport" and "Tropic of Cancer" from PBVSGR

Ross OTM, although I'd argue they jumped the shark the moment they formed and unfortunately weren't eaten by that very same shark.

i dont live in a camp there are songs i like and songs i dont

I don't think My Girls celebrates or yearns for a gentrified life. "I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls" = I just want the bare minimum - shelter - to be with and protect my family.

― flappy bird, Thursday, May 3, 2018 2:20 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah didn't they have kids around this time? to me it seemed like a post 2k take on domesticity (filtered through world music compilations)

idk the idea they're storytellers seems weird to me, at best on feels/st they did communication ideas about family/isolation whatever, but they're pretty dada to me

communicate*

well adam apparently you live in a cave if your sn is anything to go by :p

yeah

/I don't think My Girls celebrates or yearns for a gentrified life. "I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls" = I just want the bare minimum - shelter - to be with and protect my family.

― flappy bird, Thursday, May 3, 2018 2:20 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark/

yeah didn't they have kids around this time? to me it seemed like a post 2k take on domesticity (filtered through world music compilations)

MPP is mostly stories, not as abstract lyrically as Feels or SJ

I like the lyrics to Monkey Riches. One of the better post-Occupy indie songs written.

Flappy you can have this one

Discussing or arguing about ac is a thing I Just Don’t Care About

very understandable

You’re great tho :)

surely it's 'immaterial things'?
also, Merriweather was not a good album but the 7 track EP with' What Would I Want Sky' was excellent and a lot of the stuff they did before was also excellent

Van Horn Street preaching truth through this thread :-)

it is ‘material things,’ and fwiw the song was originally called ‘house’

well adam apparently you live in a cave if your sn is anything to go by :p

https://media.giphy.com/media/c6NARXsgpItVfejVVb/giphy.gif

the one line of note I find interesting is that they refer to their social status as a "material thing." maybe that classification ...

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Thursday, May 3, 2018 6:56 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always thought it was poor writing; that the 'like' should have been 'as'. ("I don't mean, To seem like I care about material things Like as our social status") Which still isn't correct but makes more sense.

One of the worst things about AC is something that seems to be forced onto them: that the world suddenly thought it extremely important to completely dissect and interpret what is just a dumb lyric. Dumb lyrics do not deserve such scrutiny. I'm not saying it's through no fault of their own; I'm pretty sure they did not mind being the posterboys for Carles/Hipster Runoff ~ironic~ schtick. Still though, that seems like decades ago (gladly so).

I don't care about AC any more, but My Girls is still a jam. And 'false modesty' is a meaningless indictment against pretty much every lyricist, or author, or poet imo.

good mourning!

lmao

Adam - my main man

I saw them on the feels tour and they were playing strawberry jam.

I still really like the run of Animal Collective albums from Sung Tongs to this one but have never really paid much attention to their lyrics, or even thought much about the lines that stand out like the My Girls one. They're a 'sound' band for me. Adam Bruneau's anecdote about people trying dance to them in a club rings very true though, definitely experienced that at least once.

Yeah, I've tried to put them on at parties as well, and it didn't work. And Peacebone worked much better than anything off of MPP. There was a misreading of them at that point, I also think In the Flowers got a lot of credit for having a 'dubstep drop', which sounds quite weird today. I think many writers struggled to figure out how they were as inspired by electronic music as they claimed to be, even on Sung Tongs, and overcorrected.

I'd still say Here Comes the Indian is their best, btw.

merriweather.....POOP pavilion

🎶 i want to scoop di poop with you 🎶

Shakedown otm

http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/11/animal-collective-oral-history

oof

Brian DeRan

I remember turning down very large licensing requests and making light of the whole thing, many times to the exasperation of the label. A Pizza Hut request came in and one of them replied with, “We will take that pizza with pepper-NO-ni.” Another came from Volkswagen for which the reply was, “That’s going to be a “PASS-at.”

More unnecessary dissection of what is essentially just a clumsily-written line: “I don’t want to seem like I care about material things, like (a) social stats” ... I dunno why this line carries so much weight. It goes round & round in my head, an awkward earworm. It’s pretty self-evident what he wants to say, & that he’s just stonedly shoehorning the words in, errors & all, to scan. “I don’t want to give the impression of caring about material things or the social status associated with them. I just want the barest of necessities for muh girls, WOO!” But the funny, sticky thing about it for me is the SEEM. That hipster-looking-over-his-shoulder self-consciousness: not that he’s actually striving not to care, driving for some ascetic sainthood, but that he doesn’t want to SEEM like he’s a (scuse the term) normie. The narrator probably authentically doesn’t care, but over and above the really-not-caring is a more overriding sense of caring quite a lot about whether he’s perceived to care.

Anyhow, “My Girls” is a jam, flaws & all. I never listen to these guys anymore, but I can be counted on to bust out my old-man dance moves when this reverb-drenched mess of a mini-masterpiece comes on.

agreed

The line does scan very awkwardly but I think the "seem" makes sense if you think of the second line as not being about requiring the "barest of necessities" but wanting to pay for a house. Which is an expensive material thing that is only able to be acquired with a substantial amount of money which, in turn, requires AC (and him as a solo artist) to make money which in turn requires that they/he be popular.

I suspect the audience for what he ~seems~ to care about is his family rather than people who might judge him: the song always struck me as being an apology for wanting the band to be successful (and devoting time to that at the expense of family time), justified by it creating the opportunity for him provide for his family.

But it's so awkwardly constructed that it's not surprising people reach different views.

10 years old this weekend

thinking the answer is Also Frightened, for its hypnotic swing and gleefully strangled harmonies

ringer retro if that sorta thing is interesting ~

https://www.theringer.com/music/2019/1/4/18167715/animal-collective-merriweather-post-pavilion-10th-anniversary-panda-bear-avey-tare

in retrospect, 'No More Runnin' is the best song on here

also like Bluish and Lion In A Coma. the rest falls prey to being horrifically of its time and way shrill. Still I can't believe it's 10 years old, that's crazy

I can’t bring myself to listen to this in 2018 at all

2019 either

the worst of GAPDY

noooo way! I hardly revisit MPP, honestly can't remember the last time I did, as opposed to all of their other records (including the new stuff). I'll never forget listening to the leak on Xmas night 2008, absolutely mind-blowing experience... but it is very "hi fi" for lack of a better term, and that polished sheen wears your ears down after a while. Is this how people regarded Nevermind in 2001?

Not sure about polished. they as a band were making some quite deliberate sonic choices including this sort-of pixilated electronic harshness that they'd grown increasingly keen on.

They'd always been a band that had experimented with noise, or more often drones - the acoustic pastoral phase between Campfire Songs and Feels made great use of that.

And before on the early Avey and Panda albums, you still got the sense they were experimenting with lo-fi noise-making equipment.

But from Strawberry Jam onwards, the songs started getting smeared in this chippy synth ooze; Avey took to doing his chimp-screech voice a bit too much; there was less subtlety, less space for the band to breathe; and everything just felt claustro like looking at an old CRT far too close-up.

By MPP, the songs had matured but their content was starting to align with the Kinfolk lumbster set of that time - big beardy men with soft voices and a fondness for log cabins - a watering-down of the freakfolk scene that AC had also been lumped in with.

I can see why people weren't and still aren't so hot on the album, but I also felt that ILM at the time was unnecessarily cruel about it, and AC, at the time.

Almost all the hate was aimed at 'My Girls' - not a particularly great song, and neither particularly representative of their overall sound. MPP, despite its flaws, is a diverse album with at least three 'hits', a good few deep cuts and of course a good bunch of unmemorable or just plain annoying songs.

great post dog latin

I do love My Girls

I recoiled from this album on contact.

really their first five albums - Spirit They're Gone Spirit They've Vanished, Danse Manatee, Campfire Songs, Here Comes the Indian, and Sung Tongs are their best imo

of those, Campfire Songs is the one that means the most to me

it's a decent, not great album that was way overrated at the time with corresponding excessive backlash. one of their better albums but certainly not their best or some sort of defining album of the 00s or anything

it's definitely a more polished sound than anything they'd done before, their previous works were all relatively lo-fi in sound, sometimes to good effect but often just sounding like a muddy mess like on strawberry jam

i probably love about half the album and don't really care for the rest much at all - that organ arpeggio on 'daily routine' is still really grating to me, something about the beat drop on 'in the flowers' doesn't quite work for me,
'also frightened' is ok but feels a little empty, 'taste' is pretty nothing-y

the 'also frightened' issue applies to a lot of this album i guess, it's so heavy on the reverb that things don't quite hit as hard as i'd want them to and often leaves nothing between the psych-y ambience and the fairly low basslines

my girls still rules though

Thing is, the EP that came out around the same time, 'Fall Be Kind' was excellent.

Everything I liked about the band but balanced by their more electronic-infused sound (sans the horrible mid-range cacophony).

Lots of ideas, plenty of room to build a vibe, a more obviously melodic angle. I really like it.

had to look up whomst the Y in "GAPDY" referred to. earnestly thought it was Yeasayer lol

xp "their previous works were all relatively lo-fi in sound, sometimes to good effect but often just sounding like a muddy mess"

don't agree with this for their earliest works, only with strawberry jam onwards

oh yeah the reverb too. so many bands were doing this super washy reverb thing, but rather than sounding cool and shoegazey, it felt synthetic, like a software reverb had been applied liberally to each instrument, including the ones you wouldn't normally add reverb to.

still really like this album though the chorus to "My Girls" is arguably the worst lyric of all time

really?

I don't care for fancy things
Or to take part in the freshest wave
But to provide for mine who ask
I will, with heart, on my father's grave

I love those lyrics

Sung Tongs will always be my favorite but I can hang with this one. it does have a little too much of that 2000's era technicolor vomit effect going on though, and Avey's yelps are always intolerable

love the album, it's all tracks, the lyrical sensibility on the record is something they'd been organically working towards for several years (as the article points out). I wasn't here on ILM for the thrashing, but this was a major album at my high school. I think I burned a dozen or so copies not only for my friends, but people that were maybe casual music fans and just discovering them. suddenly me and my friends' favorite band was 'breaking thru' in a meaningful, observable way. it was awesome.

I do think it's funny how the article frames the Xmas leak in nostalgic terms, I mean give me a break. they were freaking out at the time. and the idea that albums don't retain peoples' attention for an entire year anymore? please. maybe not animal collective records, but DAMN. was inescapable for all of 2017.

also, when I figured out what GADPY stood for, I couldn't believe it. lumping those bands and those albums together with MPP is insane. and I like Bitte Orca. I remember the YYYs being really good. but give me a break. Fleet Foxes? ok Veckatimest had some tracks, but still. absolutely not.

GADPY?

2009:
Grizzly Bear
Animal Collective
Phoenix
Dirty Projectors
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I dunno, in retrospect I think all of those albums were pretty good

lumping in the Phoenix record is especially insane. and yea, I agree the rest are pretty good. MPP was a major milestone. it was the tall tree.

xp a Whiney thing if my memory is correct

credit to him that it's stuck

it's "GAPDY" fwiw

Phoenix is the one I most want to go back to, especially in light of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez video

one of my favorite albums. i know they're not everyone's thing, but this honestly was one of the great bands of the centuries.

listening to it now makes me sad though for some reason.

also i strongly disagree with the person who said they hate the lyrics to my girls. i'm with dan s -- they're poignant and perfect

They're dangerous and stupid

!

why because they're heteronormative and glorify homeownership, which isn't sustainable?

My Girls is the most egregiously American song I've ever heard, with a song about and for black queer safe spaces re-appropriated to be a song about a rejection of community for safe ensconced family units built on acquired family money in remote ex-pat locations, a literally "I'm stealing from Detroit house to reject 'community' and build a house for my wife and child in Lisbon" realness, it is Donald Trump as a song good luck with it, and I'm a fan of this band and the man who wrote it, still: probably the worst song ever written, it is "Taxman" except built on a Frankie Knuckles sample

interesting fgti, wasn't aware of the personal history of that song or of any re-appropriation, I just related to it as a godparent (it was released in the year after my goddaughter was born, I think it will always be connected to her in my mind)

If I've ever being annoying at a dinner party, be assured you can put this song on and I'll be out the door in 15 seconds

lol

I want Funk Flex to drop a bomb on that fgti post

Lol some real nonsense in this thread

i'm into fgti's posts even though i love that song. i hadn't thought through the implications of that frankie knuckles sample.

i always saw that song as a kind of millennial ode to the vanishing dream of home ownership. the suburban life that counterculture always told people to resist, suddenly, doesn't even exist as a fallback for many of the types of people who would listen to AnCo. (obviously, for many, it never existed as a "fallback.")

They're dangerous and stupid

― flamboyant goon tie included,

otm -- loathe this song

the YYY album is still by far the best album on that incongruous list.

http://youtubedoubler.com/rlF5

the YYY album is still by far the best album on that incongruous list.

― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, January 5, 2019 5:47 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's Blitz! is not just my favourite Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, it's easily one of my favourite albums from 2000-2009 and it still holds up 10 years later. Merriweather Post Pavilion is a joke of a record from a joke of a band, and thankfully pretty much everyone realises this now. It certainly couldn't have been any more apparent to me in 2009.

it's only on ilx that "everyone" dislikes MPP. many consider it a classic.

the band's new stuff doesn't inspire enthusiasm but "my girls" is part of the indie canon

Many people considered Brothers in Arms a classic in 1985 yet attitudes had changed towards that album by 1995. Same thing applies to Merriweather Post Pavilion's reputation from 2009 to 2019. I'm of course not talking about sales here - Animal Collective were never that big and never could have been.

i just don't think there has been a consensus turn against it. the people who loved animal collective now mostly see that album as a really nostalgic artifact from a different time in their lives.

there isn't any embarrassment when it comes on someone's playlist.

Assuming that it makes their playlist to begin with.

but this honestly was one of the great bands of the centuries.
lol wow

sorry just meant this century, which hasn't been going on too long

They were a fun little band for a minute ok but one of the greats ?

maybe not. i really liked them in high school and college and i think they helped me learn to appreciate a wider sonic palette at that time.

So let’s say they were on of the bands that had the greatest impact on you. Totally fair and understandable

I was in my mid 20 hanging around Brooklyn a lot at the time so experienced it totally differently

i was 19 going on 20 when it was released in late 2008. i remember listening to it in my girlfriend-at-the-time's dorm room, for some reason the mattress was on the floor. i remember thinking i could tell it was going to be big--they were moving to a more accessible sound while still keeping true to what was unique about them

it was one of the few songs you would hear at both "alt" type parties and frat parties, of which there were a ton at my college (sadly). the song was a rare common cultural reference point then--i feel like there is probably less a divide now between self-styled indie kids and mainstream frat types but who knows

Counterpoint: It's not a Frankie Knuckles sample.

Terrible song though.

As far as GAPDY goes, Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear were by far my favorites, and afaic the only ones still making good records.

Never clicked with AC, it felt like it wasn't for me, though this one definitely made it to midwest MFA parties and potlucks.

the strongest emotion I have toward this album is resentment, specifically for ushering in carles nostalgia

GAPDY was not about those albums being similar or linked other than that they all dominated critic lists that year. There was a sense in 2009 that critics were relieved to be able to frame indie rock as embracing the weird and experimental and danceable and fun and electronic and worldly (and each of the albums seems to fit at least two of those adjectives), thus allowing them to go back to ignoring all the non-indie rock music that otherwise had been supplying those vibes. But that dynamic was as much about albums that had come out in the preceding years like Sound of Silver and All Hour Cymbals and the first Vampire Weekend album (and Strawberry Jam to an extent, but more importantly Person Pitch). 2008 was just the year it seemed to verge on the all-consuming as a critical frame.

In retrospect of course

... 2008 was not indie rock’s resurgence but its last gasp?

As for this album, I liked it at the time but haven’t listened in ages. I agree that Fall Be Kind was better and better still was the live version of these songs I saw in Berlin in late 2007 where it all sounded more like “#1” and the second half of “Safer”.

Eh I dunno though there seems to be a sort of permanent pro indie rock circuit where bands play large clubs or small theaters, like acts like Chvrches or Kurt Vile

Tame Impala headlining Coachella seems like as much of a high point as it'll get at present.

I mean it beats working!

Though I'm not sure any of the GAPDY bands got much bigger than that anyway

CHVRCHES aren't an indie rock band!

I guess the other thought I have is that 2009 looked like Fever Ray and Two Suns and Abnormally Attracted to Sin in my world, so all of this discourse is perpetually baffling to me

that and the vocals are not listenable, but that is my thought on most related bands

Well yeah, to me 2009 looked like Electrik Red and The-Dream and lots of uk funky and etc. and to others it was other stuff again, but to (it seemed like) 80% of critics it was mostly GAPDY, and that’s what seemed stifling at the time.

CHVRCHES aren't an indie rock band!

― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Saturday, January 5, 2019 4:56 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah they are, they are electronic but they are totally indie rock

"this band isn't indie rock!" - an argument in 2019

It's not an argument, just mere fact. CHVRCHES are a pop band. If CHVRCHES are indie rock, then so are Erasure. Erasure aren't indie rock either.

Yeah they're indie stop being obtuse

Like 3 people in indie bands in glasgow start a synth pop group = it's indie baby

lmao none more indie

Then by that logic, if they'd started a jazz fusion band you'd still be calling it indie, which is pretty idiotic.

They wouldn't do that tho because they're too indie

Cool. Well, I'm gonna crank The Innocents now - that legendary indie rock classic.

Oh god I just cited them and Vile because they both seem in that middle class career wise, didn't know this was gonna get Turricanned.

I can’t really extract my overall feelings for AC from my feelings for Panda Bear solo which are very positive. Tomboy following Person Pitch is one of the nicest build upon/reinventions and frankly a breathtaking follow up to a widely-considered-classic-album (I think it is, too)— those two albums are prob my favourites of this entire GAPDY thing

My favourite of all this era tho was GGD both live and on record

Agreed GGD were the best.

yeah person pitch is my favourite ac-related album easily. tomboy is decent but not as like texturally rich so i never got into it in the same way though

ggd were and still are the best, eye contact is one of my favourite albums ever

Well yeah, to me 2009 looked like Electrik Red and The-Dream

These were two of my favorites too, and outside ILM I felt like an outlier. It took only, what, a couple more years for us to stand in place for the rest of rockcrit to catch up.

Black Dice put out their best album in 2009, to me they were second only to AC as the most exciting and unique band of this era (and Eric Copeland has a similarly stellar solo career, arguably eclipsing his main band just like Panda Bear). GGD were good but I always found them kind of boring, though they have tracks, and God's Money is pretty great all the way thru.

I don't consider GGD or Black Dice from the GAPDY scene, they feel like no1ze ppl that got dancey

I don't consider GGD or Black Dice from the GAPDY scene, they feel like no1ze ppl that got dancey

GAPDY '09 sounded like they were taking cues from BTTLS (SING THIS HOOK OH AY OH) and Anco in particular from YES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Gl6kI1_Xw

who burned down the MPP 9012live when they boys were in kindergarten (?)

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/yes/1984/merriweather-post-pavilion-columbia-md-6bdf2296.html

Black Dice did a bunch of collabs with Wolf Eyes... That's not GAPDY vibes

Black Dice and Lightning Bolt show pics

http://www.self-titledmag.com/2009/10/31/microwave-only-devils-night-with-black-dice-lightning-bolt-and-a-bunch-of-brooklynites-dressed-up-as-bat-for-lashes-miss-piggy-more/

I'd agree there's a link between Black Dice and the earlier Animal Collective stuff, they toured and released a split EP together at some point right?

I still love this album although I admit I haven't played it in a while. Sung Tongs is by far my favourite of the group records at this point.

Avay Tare and Eric Copeland had a band together! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Tones

Maybe I'm off on this, but for a minor band AC plays some pretty big venues. I remember them selling out Stubb's in particular.

Put it this way, AnCo is like Randall "Pink" Floyd in Dazed and Confused, they can travel between groups but he's still GAPDY, whereas Wolf Eyes are like Slater.

Like they can be cool with each other and do a side project/go get Aerosmith tickets but fundamentally they aren't from the same scene

Haha!

AC played with Wolf Eyes a lot in the early days

On sure but then AnCo joined the football team and they kinda grew apart, but they still got together sometimes

haha

someone said it upthread, but the whole GAPDY thing wasn't a scene, it was just that those 5 bands were the favorites of a particularly strong critical consensus that year (5 of the top 6 albums AND songs in the PnJ poll came from the GAPDY). And they were all to one extent or another "established" indie acts, and therefore pretty easy to yawn at.

Of course AnCo emerged from the early 2000s noise scene (covered in this Whiney thread), "GAPDY" status doesn't eliminate that or give their noizier fellow travelers "GAPDY" status

that said GGD was one of my favorite bands of that era, always glad to see them get love. I liked that "noise bands" get blissed out era, high places was another band that had similar vibes to me

I've accepted that I have zero idea of how popular anyone is in real world terms these days. Like, I thought Kurt Vile was indie-famous and doing fine, but I didn't know that he could sell out a 2500 capacity venue in Wisconsin.

Similarly, I hadn't heard of this band Lake Street Dive until a few months ago, but all the 40+ year olds I know were like "oh yeah, of course" and they sold out the same venue. I'm not sure where they would even hear about a band like that (inoffensive folk-y r&b) besides NPR?

Kurt Vile has made Obama's top songs/albums list a couple years at least, including the recent one.

Xpost Jordan - I'm sure your familiar with the Current npr station in Mpls, stream that and you'll get a great view into that whole Lake Street Drive hip for basics (tm) scene

idk how we got here, but kurt vile is one of the most played artists on alt rock radio

I've relistened to this album all the way through and my conclusions are:

- I'm not a lyrics person and I never cared about AC's lyrics because half the time they're way too obfuscated to understand, so it's strange to see so much emphasis on the lyrics to My Girls
- I'm surprised that this was such a crossover hit in the US (playing at frat parties etc). Hardly the case in the UK.
- The lyrics are one thing - you could interpret them one of many ways - but for me the production on My Girls is representative of the downfall of this album. This song would be a million times better if the production had been bigger. Those big bass hits just don't sound very big at all. It's like dance music with all the oomph sucked out of it. The semblance of bass, without the low end. The vocals should be beautiful and soaring but they're flat and sit awkwardly in the mix.
- I'd love to hear a remixed version of the whole album. Tone down all the horrible squiggly deteriorated synth noises, let the thing breathe a bit, get rid of the DAW reverb that suddenly so many bands were flooding their music with at that point. There are good songs in here, but they're so overstuffed and compressed and undynamic that something like Daily Routine just wooshes past without touching the sides.

Good to see some Tomboy loving. I prefer it to Person Pitch and MPP by a considerable stretch. Never got the hang of Person Pitch

completely agree about the mix - i do like my girls a lot as it is but it could have been so much better than it was. it at least sounds much better on record than most of the dreadful live versions

Person Pitch's appeal was really about "Comfy In Nautica" being such a shock in its simplicity, brutally repetitious production and a sing-song melody, I remember feeling incredibly wide-eyed wow the first time a friend put it on. It's a very aesthetically extreme album and the extremity of what-it-was-doing has probably become less impactful, but it seemed so bold at the time

I was a big fan of AC and Panda Bear's Young Prayer at the time but Person Pitch made very little impact.

I revisit it occasionally and it leaves me totally cold other than maybe the last track which is quite pretty. Again, it's a production thing for me - a sound that had become increasingly popular between about 2007-2011 where indie types were experimenting with dance music and, at the same time, shoegaze, but getting them both a bit wrong.

Whatever continuum encompassed both Caribou and Grizzly Bear: 4/4 beats stripped of bass, devoid of funk and played reed-thin; Beach Boys-influenced harmonies with all the blood let out; layer upon layer upon layer of twiggly folk guitar; electronic reverb applied with a spade. I hated it so much.

fwiw the only AC song with a bass guitar is What Would I Want? Sky

dog latin: makes sense you dig Ponytail the most of all the songs on PP, that one always seemed to me like a preview/transitional piece to Tomboy.

that's a good point. they don't have a bass player, never really struck me. but yes the synthetic bass they use on their work is horrible. I say that as a fan

Maybe because I was so used to the live versions of these songs - saw them the week Strawberry Jam came out, and listened to countless bootlegs - when I heard the album I was blown away by the bass presence. As opposed to SJ, where imo they neutered a stellar group of dark songs into something too dry, too clean - MPP sounded fully realized, evolved, high-def. I love the production on MPP and think Ben Allen was the perfect person to produce it, I hear lots of bass, but perhaps it was just obvious in comparison to the live versions.

my problem with the lyrics on "My Girls" isn't the theme but rather that they sound like they were written by someone who does not speak English

I just realised the melody from Comfort In Nautica always reminded me faintly of the Thames Television ident..

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DuN5QiUk00E

xp that's AC all over though. it's what I liked about previous albums. the lyrics sounded like they'd literally been written by animals who had somehow become lucid and it really worked with that bongos and acoustic guitars vibe they were doing then.

but on My Girls they do just sound a bit lazy, The idea that 'social status' is a 'material thing', the use of 'Adobe slabs'. There is something facile and tossed off about it, as opposed to primal

I agree PB's lyrics have always been facile. the one that always bugged me was the chorus of "Take Pills": "I don't want for us to take pills / anymore / not that it's bad." --- huh???

I remember reading or hearing recently that he writes the vocal melodies first always and finds words that fit the cadence... hence such mindblowing lyrics on his recent "Part of the Math": "I'm an animal / I'm a mineral / I'm a vegetable / I'm an abacus / alright."

but he's always good for some gems, like "Sunset," which does have the line "were a peacock in the rain / slain / when a bum note is in play," but the line "every day I found a euro on the ground" within the context of the song's severe melancholy hits me hard. that's a beautiful song.

p4k weighs in: Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion Was Radical Enough to Redefine Indie Music. Why Didn’t It?

the absolute state of that headline jfc

the headline only comes into play in the last 3 grafs, the rest is pretty much the same as all the other retro pieces:

What’s slightly more surprising is Merriweather’s own lack of projected influence on indie at large. Even though chillwave, the electronic pop sub-genre borne out of the bedroom-recording movement of the early 2010s, is often attributed to Merriweather’s influence, its practitioners’ taste for hazy atmospherics and nostalgia-evoking reference points hews way closer to Person Pitch’s warped aesthetic than Merriweather’s high-gloss sheen. During much of the 2000s, acts that liberally borrowed from Animal Collective’s aesthetic were everywhere, from the electric abstractions of indie rockers Nurses to the off-kilter folk of acts like Our Brother the Native and Le Loup. But going into the 2010s, such acts simply stopped popping up, as much an acknowledgement of Merriweather’s unbeatablity as a signal of a new cultural focus taking hold in indie.

Even the level of mass excitement that led up to Merriweather’s release—a palpable sense of anticipation readily memorable to any aging indie fan who spent the 2000s with the type of high-speed internet access that only their university could provide—has yet to be replicated in the decade since. The collective sway of the internet’s attention is more diffuse, diverse, and ephemeral, and much of the emergent indie trends this decade have drawn from more melodically fertile ground than the defiantly outré sounds that Animal Collective worked in pre-Merriweather.

These changings of the guard aren’t bad things, they just are—and when it comes to Merriweather, they work in Animal Collective’s favor. The album’s singular mythology speaks to its strange and strangely simple pleasures. Animal Collective chose not to finish the conversation their most successful album started, and no one else even dared to try.

I may be alone in this but I more or less just consider this album the apex of chillwave. like, I know they weren't really part of that scene such as it was, but that's the cultural/musical context that it seems to slot into in terms of sound and approach.

lol xps

Washed Out and Neon Indian's signature hits all came out the same year, after all

I think that makes sense, in the same way that Nevermind is the apex of "grunge" despite Nirvana flying on their own and not really participating in the ensuing cultural wave (besides bumps for Soundgarden, Melvins, and Mudhoney, similar to the rising tide that helped AC's friends like Black Dice, Lightning Bolt, and GGD). in my mind Silverchair = Neon Indian is a perfect comparison.

it's all just post-Obama victory drugs-n-partying for norms music

i could write a book-length ilx post about what this album meant to me and others at my liberal arts college. i may just do that, even if it earns me 51 flag posts.

flappy bird otm.

haha

weird album for me in that i did really love it when i came out, though not as much as person pitch, but then i have listened to none of the ac related material that's been released subsequently.

if anyone is seeking bass from these guys please check out A Day with the Homies by Panda Bear, released last year. it's vinyl only and there's nothing online though............... I did make a tape bounce of it and it's in my dropbox uh... just sayin..........

Reminder that this year I'm either going to run or make seandalai run the overdue 2000-09 albums and tracks poll

mpp is a good hippie album, no more no less imo

this is overall good but referring to the MP3 blog era as "pre-algorithm" is really strange considering the existence/relative ubiquity of the Hype Machine https://pitchfork.com/features/article/animal-collectives-merriweather-post-pavilion-was-radical-enough-to-redefine-indie-music-why-didnt-it/

many interesting recent posts. never thought about it in this way but "post-Obama victory drugs-n-partying for norms music" in retrospect although maybe a little cynical makes some sense

I had the same experience as jim in vancouver, I liked the album but not as much as Person Pitch, and never followed them after that. I'm really enjoying hearing it again

I think I can understand why people *really* like this album, it does have a glow. the slight preferencing of treble over bass is an interesting choice and doesn't seem like one that is just based in amateurishness to me

Is anyone really ready for '00s nostalgia yet?

We should start a thread for all the forgotten 00s music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMOZRk74QrY

^dope song btw

some of the writing in that pitchfork article is v bad.

yeah

Nobody cares anymore but the live album that just came out is a perfect era capsule. I think I saw them three times btw Feels and MPP, that moment caught in time is still something special imo.

I can't believe the bootlegs I was drooling over before MPP came out are now on triple vinyl.

The beatless version of Banshee Beat is so great.