AWmusic

The new music video for Animal Collective’s My Girls has been released and isn’t all that spectacular.

Most music videos aren’t anyway. There are some moments meant to inspire the trippy nature that is Animal Collective while the band in under a silhouette. The problem I find is that I have a hard time not imagining The Blue Man Group. While you watch that video, just paint the heads blue, go ahead. Now try to stop imagining. See? It’s like the Blue Man Group decided to jump in that Ipod commercial. The ironic thing is that it wouldn’t be too far fetched. The Blue Man Group always has interesting ways of performing with music and could be caught playing with the same instrument setup in the video.

^Trying to justify not being crazy. Has it worked?

Wow did I really write this? Owell..I’ve got nothing else.

Everything was as it should have been a few days ago. 2009 was just an empty cultural vessel waiting to be filled and the ghosts of last year’s music players, end of year lists and conversational exchanges were still hanging around, waiting to be replaced. It could have been another predictably desolate January, but then Animal Collective had to go ahead and ruin it by releasing their “best recorded album.” Just as the usual seasonal torpor descended upon us, the band effectively pressed a ctrl/alt/del button on our wintertime psyches by delivering one of the best albums of 2009, and long before anyone else had a chance. Now the bleak winter visions don’t look so bad and the cold doesn’t get to your bones as much as it should when your finger presses repeat on your listening device, again and again and again…
Merriweather Post Pavilion is a ridiculously euphoric album, full of Animal Collective’s signature sonic techniques. The tribal rhythms, the choral chants and the bubbling background noises are all still bumping into one another in joyous ways, but the crunching dissonance, elongated passages and bleating yelps of old have evaporated to present a new streamlined, almost pop version of the band. As Strawberry Jam revealed in places and last year’s live shows explicitly confirmed, they’ve now ditched the freak-folk and embraced electronic psychedelia, and on Merriweather Post Pavilion they’ve reaped the benefits by melding the primal pulse-quickening excitement of dance music to the warmth of emotional connection and the exhilaration of just being alive.
The low-end bass may manipulate rising heartbeats and the constant peaking of the repeated song climaxes may mimic house music’s obvious ecstatic amphetamine based mores, but the content of the songs themselves manage to belie the traditions of the dance music form by infusing a very real sense of excitement into the listening experience by addressing the joy of sensation, physical satisfaction and even out of body experiences. Avey Tare sings about watching dancers, walking around town and wanting to “leave my body, just for a while,” whereas Panda Bear advocates domestic security, doing what his body wants to and asks confusingly if he is “really all the things that are outside of me?”
For many of the contrary appreciators of Animal Collective who still hold Sung Tongs up as the pivotal ground zero of the band’s career, Merriweather Post Pavilion will seem like a disappointing commercial realignment of a cherished experimental band. But despite the absence of the familiar baying cacophonies that used to typify the Animal Collective sound and the subsequent electronic re-shaping of their musical identity, Merriweather Post Pavilion is still a remarkably unique album and one that could have only come from this band. Not a single song feels out of place or lacks the exhilarating incantation of the shared vocals and the songs are sequenced perfectly together with detailed textures that increase the infectious joy of listening to tracks like, “My Girls”, “Brother Sport” and “Summertime Clothes” continuously in a loop, and if that is your bent you won’t want Merriweather Post Pavilion to ever stop playing between your ears.

Animal Collective – My Girls
Animal Collective – Brothersport
Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes

**Links removed by request, Web Sheriff pwnage**

Numbers 1 through 25:
#1 Ready For The Floor by Hot Chip (myspace/video)
Best dance song of the year? Best song too.
#2 Crimewave – Crystal Castles vs Health (Crystal Castles’ myspace/Health’s Myspace/video)
This version is miles better then the original.
#3 Little Bit by Lykke Li (myspace/live)
I’m not only a little bit in love with this.
#4 L.E.S. Artists by Santogold (myspace/video)
Santogold’s least creative but most accessible track.
#5 Hearts On Fire by Cut Copy (myspace/video)
Cut Copy has a ton of great tracks.
#6 Head Rolls Off by Frightened Rabbit (myspace/video)
“Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name”
#7 White Winter Hymnal by The Fleet Foxes (myspace/video)
#26 on my top songs of 2007 list.
#8 M79 by Vampire Weekend(myspace/live)
The better of the two new songs.
#9 Graveyard Girl by M83 (myspace/video)
Without the poem, this could very well be #1.
#10 Unforgettable Season by Cut Copy (live)
Not the most danceable but my favorite.
#11 You Me Dancing by Los Campesinos! (myspace/video -ep version)
It takes long to get started but worth the wait.
#12 Magic Spells by Crystal Castles
This song is their most artistic/creative venture.
#13 Kim & Jessie by M83 (video)
Another great track off Saturdays=Youth.
#14 Skeng by The Bug ft. Killa P and Flowdan(myspace/video)
Best track off the amazing London Zoo.
#15 Machine Gun by Portishead (homepage/video)
Even if the song is simple, Beth Gibbons does wonders.
#16 Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend (video)
Number 4 of my 2007 list.
#17 These Few Presidents by Why? (myspace/live)
“Even if I haven’t seen you in years, yours is a funeral I’d fly to from anywhere” – had to break my rule for that line.
#18 Time To Pretend by MGMT (myspace/video)
It’ll be ironic if they have a coke habit.
#19 Kids by MGMT (video)
They do know how to make a decent pop song.
#20 The Twist by Frightened Rabbit (live)
Emotions of a simple dance, captured perfectly.
#21 Everyone I Know Is Listening To Crunk by Lightspeed Champion (myspace/live)
Everybody I know IS listening to crunk.
#22 Teenagers by Department of Eagles (myspace)
My favorite song off In Ear Park.
#23 Furr by Blitzen Trapper (myspace/live)
One of the better folk songs of the year.
#24 Lost Coastlines by Okkervil River (myspace/video)
Jonathan Meiburg vocals puts on the perfect touch.
#25 Street Flash by Animal Collective (myspace)
Anyone excited for Merriweather Post Pavilion? (We’ve heard the leaks)

Apart from the fact it has an obvious motorik rhythm and the song’s thrust is the perfect aural accompaniment to watching cars eat up the white lines in the middle of the road, this Deerhunter track manages to represent the essential dichotomy of travelling in a motor vehicle. The contrast between the moving world outside and still world within a car is significant, like a song called “Nothing Ever Happened” that has a lot happening within it.
Deerhunter – Nothing Ever Happened

Best Song From A Band Named After An Animal
Animal Collective – Seal Eyeing

Putting Animal Collective in this category may be a little too literal, but once again Animal Collective release an arresting stopgap EP between albums and the Water Curses EP will maybe seem like the ideal bridge between Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post Pavilion when we have the benefit of hindsight, but beneath the aquatic bubbling sounds that introduce “Seal Eyeing” there exists a fragile reverberating piano odyssey made for moments of graceful meditation.
Animal Collective – Seal Eyeing

Best Song Influenced By Pet Sounds
Department of Eagles – No One Does It Like You

The ghost of “God Only Knows” echoes through this track but Department of Eagles deliver pleasing layer after layer of ornate sounds, which only reveal themselves fully after repeated listens. Like many of the tracks on In Ear Park, the rich production values seem to offer an opportunity to get lost in a world of detailed instrumentation, which is surely the intention behind the same techniques used by Brian Wilson, all those years ago.
Department Of Eagles – No One Does It Like You

Best Song To Contemplate The Fragility Of Existence With
Chad Van Gaalen – Rabid Bits of Time

Chad Van Gaalen sings about death on Soft Airplane, sometimes with cheeky abandon in chirpy sounding songs that are designed to get under the skin, but nowhere is the flimsy thread of mortality personified so appropriately than on “Rabid Bits of Time.” When Gaalen sings in his quivering voice, “No one knows where we go, when we’re dead or when we’re dreaming,” it’s like listening to someone telling you something you already know, but never really understood until it is disclosed as simply as it is here.
Chad Van Gaalen – Rabid Bits of Time

Best Song That Ends With A Whimper
Women – Black Rice

“Black Rice” clangs along like a lost art rock classic from a late 60s, which for once doesn’t sound like it is an amateur appropriation, reshaped and regurgitated into a diluted version of the original music that influenced its creation. Glockenspiels tinkle with the guitars to lead to a climax that never comes as the momentum abruptly ends with a limp strum, and after all the musical pay-offs that have become so commonplace it’s refreshing to hear a song that causes you to listen to its journey because it doesn’t conclude with a bang or a fade.
Women – Black Rice

I summed up the courage to check out just 4 tracks especially after Christian recommended the song Seal Eyeing as one of his top ten of the year. While I realize this doesn’t mean much, I can vouch that Christian likes some good music and it was definitely worth checking out.

Water Curses was surprising, while most point to other works as being significant, I liked this little record right off the bat. Specifically the longest track, Street Flash will starts off slow(just like how I like) and adds layer after layer with excellent vocals from Avey Tare (just found he’s married to former lead singer of mum). Of course one could not talk about Animal Collective without the extra sound effects and experimentation. You get a shriek randomly throughout the song in addition to some noise etc. I guess you can’t really say enough about how much is within an Animal Collective track.

I think one downside that I personally dislike about a lot of experimental bands is the use of experimentation for the sake of it. In orders word sometimes overdoing it and missing the mark. On this EP they do a ton of it and it actually works quite well, but would it work for you or me? That’s really hit or miss.

It’s clear that I’m coming to accept Animal Collective’s talent a bit but sometimes I want a little more or a little less. With Seal Eyeing is a slowly developing song that feels like it has its moment right near the end of the track but I feel it didn’t go full circle like it did with Street Flash.

For an EP, I do feel enticed to check out their discography as I am left impressed but still not overly impressed.

I don’t like giving EP’s high score (it’s very different from a full length) unless I have to. It’s a pretty good LP that divulges well into noise/experimental music but while I like bits and pieces of Water Curses and Cobwebs, I don’t really really like those songs as a whole.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Street Flash by Animal Collective

Seal Eyeing by Animal Collective