Album Spotlight: Animal Collective’s ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’

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Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective

2009

Electronic, Indie Rock, Experimental, Psychedelic

2 x Vinyl

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2009 might not seem like that long ago, but consider the landscape at the time: the first iPhones had launched, but Spotify had not yet hit the American market; free and cheap computer-based production software was changing music making while mp3 blogs (and their detractors) were shaping hype and distribution; a decade of indie sleaze and the Brooklyn-ification of music and culture was coming to its culmination; the economy was reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, Obama had just begun his first term, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were poised to enter a second decade. 

In this context, the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Baltimore experimental/indie/folk/electronic/noise act Animal Collective became the moment’s most unexpected indie pop darlings with their eighth studio album Merriweather Post Pavilion. After years of lo-fi spirit chasing, collaborations with experimental noise acts Black Dice and freak folkies Vashti Bunyan, well-received solo efforts, and growing critical acclaim, 2007’s album Strawberry Jam hinted at Animal Collective’s potential outre pop appeal with tracks like “Fireworks” and “Peacebone.” But it was Merriweather Post Pavilion’s digitally psychedelic pop, led by singles “My Girls” and “Summertime Clothes,” that confirmed the band’s unexpected crossover appeal.

“My Girls” with its looping, longing chorus built around a wish to provide “four walls and adobe slabs for my girls” feels both like the first bright-eyed flush of fatherhood and its attendant responsibilities but also like a collective rallying cry. Written in the first flash of a housing crisis that still reverberates today, the song’s girls could be old enough to be in college or graduating high school now, and that chorus still echoes unresolved. 

“Summertime Clothes,” though universal in its charms, painted a portrait of NYC both eternal – the seasonal piles of hot trash on the street corners – and ephemeral, as its era as center of the musical universe was already drawing to a close, to be replaced with the everywhere-placelessness of a new online cultural age. 

Between the dead-eyed escapism of early ‘00s electroclash and the pastoral retreat of mid-’00s indie folk, Animal Collective navigated into something else entirely. Collaborators since their high school days, the band keep a wide-eyed sense of wonder at the heart of their music, eschewing both easy irony and cheap-seats sincerity in favor of feelings more amorphous and hard to pin down – the kind of slippery insights that feel hard to recall after a dream or a psychedelic experience.

On Merriweather, the band deployed twinkling synthesizer arpeggios and electronically smeared samples but layered them alongside acoustic instruments and multi-tracked vocal harmonies. The resulting sound was rich and enveloping but still showed its DIY seams. You could get lost in these songs but you could also always unravel your way out.

The album would earn a 9.6 and “Best New Music” from ‘00s indie arbiters Pitchfork and reach 13 on the Billboard 200 and number two on the Independent Albums chart, and the band’s extensive touring in support of it would be documented with the live album Ballet Slippers, released on Merriweather’s 10th anniversary in 2019.

Animal Collective have stayed typically busy in the years since, both as a group and in their individual projects, scoring films, collaborating with the likes of Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, clearing the world’s first-ever legal Grateful Dead sample, and turning up in the credits to Beyonce’s Lemonade. But 2009 and the enduring, oddball sweetness of Merriweather Post Pavilion still stands as their cultural high water mark, a moment when Animal Collective fully cohered around their singular strengths and whose strange vibes they were perhaps uniquely able to give shape.