Animal Collective: "My Girls" (video)

This is such a beautiful video.

Warren Ellis on the new Animal Collective album

Blogger and sci-fi writer Warren Ellis offers this review of Merriweather Post Pavilion:

The new Animal Collective album isn’t a bad album, by any means. What it is, is relentlessly bright. It sounds like a rain of silver dollars clattering down on a magnesium countertop for an hour. It stays in that upper register for so long that it is, to me, the aural equivalent of eating something with so much sugar in it that my teeth start to hurt. It’s diificult to listen to the thing all the way through because I find myself wanting to buy shades for my ears, just to get rid of the fucking glare and hear what else is going on. If I could slice off all that toppiness, I imagine I’d find a very good Animal Collective album — certainly an interesting one, a biographical step on from Panda Bear’s solo work, moving from the euphoria of finding joy in your twenties to three childhood friends feeling slightly adrift in the onset of real adulthood. It’s a collection of ideas for a Great Album, but the execution and production isn’t quite there yet. Animal Collective fans thought MERRIWEATHER would be a game-changer. I think it’ll be the next one, once they’ve got the distance to look back with clarity on what will be ten years in music.

Ellis is a very grumpy man.

Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion

Artist: Animal Collective
Album: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Date Released: January 12, 2009
Genre: experimental, rock, indie rock
Rating: 9.2

Review: In what is arguably their best release to date, Animal Collective has issued the most user-friendly album of their brilliant 7 year career. Previous releases, like Here Comes the Indian (2003) and Strawberry Jam (2007) have been gorgeous and intricate, but the experimental nature of their work has often made for challenging (if not difficult) listening -- they've never really appealed to mainstream sensibilities, nor have they really tried. But with Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective has released their first "pop album" and are now poised to take their career to a different level.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is a showcase for the band and their talents. The album features all the Animal Collective trademarks: sophisticated sound design, modal minimalism, sweeping expanses, fantastic melodies and provocative lyrics. Animal Collective, the duo of Avey Tare (aka David Porter) and Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox), has produced tracks that are laden with electronic pulses and swells, all while dressed with Brian Willsonesque harmonies and a deep acoustic space. And lest their fans fear that they've gone commercial, their song arrangements are still highly unconventional and groundbreaking.

What makes Merriweather Post Pavilion particularly remarkable is how inherently listenable it is and how it reinvents itself with each listen.

The album also features remarkable cover art in which the green leaf-like objects appear to sway and flow. Indeed, like the album cover, Animal Collective remain one of the most unique and talented bands in the world.

Track highlights: "My Girls," "Bluish," and "Brother Sport."