Animal Collective - Merriweather POLL Pavilion

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