Animal Collective - Merriweather POLL Pavilion

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

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.