Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino/Emi)

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When you listen closely to Animal Collective’s 9th full length album it’s disturbingly dense and complex, yet ultimately after a while all of this peels away to reveal a warm, woozy and very melodic fractured pop masterpiece. They’ve moved well beyond those acoustic folkish tunes of previous albums and arrived at a much more electronic sound – albeit one that’s more than a little confused and messed up.

Their exuberant throb has almost been replaced by white boy funk, tapping in to their inner groove, with these crazy amorphous electronics and steady metronomic percussion. The ingredients are quite odd, buzzes of synth, field recordings, peculiar groans, real instruments treated to the point of abstraction. It’s experimental and as usual all over the shop, yet thanks to their Brian Wilsonesque (or is that Mike Love?) multi layered, multi part vocals it all comes out sounding like, well pop. Pop with hope. Music that hasn’t been dumbed down for commercial potential. Take away the lyrics, which anchor the songs in a woozy melodic bliss, then you’re left with the kind of weird ass sonic curiosities that you expect from them. Hooks bubble up in these songs like the carbonation in soda with alarming frequency, whether it’s a cute little run or more often than not some vocal mannerism that just keeps you holding on happily despite the oddness.

It’s hard to know whether this is their most accessible album yet, or we’ve gotten so used to their endearing wide eyed chaos that they’ve trained us to believe it is. Regardless it’s definitely a very confident and inspiring step forward from an outfit who have no interest in doing things like anyone else, and if that don’t give you hope for the future of music nothing will.

Bob Baker Fish

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Bob is the features editor of Cyclic Defrost. He is also evil. You should not trust the opinions of evil people.

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