Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion

2007′s Strawberry Jam proved once again that Baltimore’s Animal Collective knew their way around psychedelic rock, but I wasn’t left with as much of an impression as some listeners evidently were.

And, to be fair, it’s easy to get caught up in all the Internet hype and Pitchfork doting, and lose track of what matters most (the music itself), but Feels, from 2005, had been the band’s definitive statement to my ears. That was an album whose eccentricity and complexity I had found intoxicating, and the band’s best effort. Merriweather Post Pavillion has changed that.

This is a beautifully textured record, packed with all the distorted harmonies the band is known for, but with a bit more melody and less outright experimentation than the last record. It treads a finer balance between eclecticism and accessibility, and is probably one of the few albums released in the first quarter of 2009 that will be a serious contender for end-of-the-year lists.

The album takes its name from a popular Maryland venue, and the choice of title could be seen as a conscious reflection of the music’s less inclusive nature. Highlights My Girls and Brother Sport are infectious psychedelic freak-outs, the latter of the two opening with Afro-Pop infused verses that sound like something Vampire Weekend would be dabbling in, before the verses suddenly transform into the chorus of the song, something about opening your throat. One of the lyrics sounds an awful lot like: “I know it sucks that daddy’s gone,” but the Internet tells me it’s actually, “I know it doesn’t get any darker.” Another distorted lyric from the track seems to be chanting, “Smooch brother,” but it’s actually “Sport brother.” The song’s either about oral sex, incest, or musicians encouraging their brothers to start singing. Or, on a more somber note, the death of one of the bandmembers’ father. There’s a lot going on here.

And that’s what makes Merriweather so much fun — buried underneath all the layers of music and vocal harmony are even more layers of ambivalent lyrics (some of which almost seem to border upon the edge of contradiction). You can lose yourself for hours in this mess and still return without really understanding what you just experienced. And that’s an admirable trait in an era of disposable albums led by singles that often tell us their purpose up front, so that we’re left listening to the tracks knowing what we’re meant to look for. There’s no guide to Merriweather and that makes the listening experience itself a great deal more pleasurable.

Animal Collective will most likely never fully break through into the mainstream, but if there’s one album so far that gives them a reasonable chance at doing so, it’s Merriweather Post Pavillion. For many artists, the unavoidable “breakthrough” album is often perceived as a “sell-out,” an artistic compromise in favour of fortune and fame: the ultimate American Dream. So perhaps one of the most remarkable things about Animal Collective is that, with this album, the band has provided itself an opportunity to achieve the American Dream without any sacrifices. And maybe that’s the real American Dream, after all.

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