Not into Merriweather

Animal Collective albums tend to be growers—a bit difficult to approach at first, sometimes even outright baffling, but extremely rewarding on repeated listens. But now that I’ve had a few weeks to settle into their new (and widely-acclaimed) record Merriweather Post Pavilion, I have to admit that it hasn’t yet wowed me. I’m not saying it’s bad—far from it—but in recent years, Animal Collective has set the bar so high that anything less than a flat-out great record comes as a disappointment.

I find their previous full-length, Strawberry Jam, so deeply compelling that, even after dozens and dozens of listens, it continues to arrest my attention completely every time I hear it. Merriweather is sonically adventurous and sometimes quite beautiful, but to my ear it lacks the rough-edged, emotionally-rich tension between avant-strangeness and pop sweetness that makes Strawberry Jam so wonderful. Or, put another way: Merriweather Post Pavilion indulges more frequently in pleasantness and less frequently in moments when a howl or a shout cuts through the tunefulness (as in the magnificent “For Reverend Green”) or when a haunting (but also pretty) melody rises up surprisingly from from a fractured and wildly unconventional arrangement (as in “Cuckoo Cuckoo”). Instead, Merriweather Post Pavilion presents gentle melodies awash in squishy, burbling electronics. It’s a worthy record—hummable, and full of marvelous, inventive sounds. But I don’t find it gripping or involving. It has never once made me want to drop everything else just to listen to it.

Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective

It’s not that Merriweather doesn’t have its moments: “Guys Eyes” uses a stuttering rhythm and Beach Boys harmonies (always a potent weapon in the Animal Collective musical arsenal) to set up a dizzying climax that then sails just as smoothly back into a verse; and “Lion in a Coma” catapults from a gentle start into grand sonic spaces. But even the latter track throws me sometimes, in part because of the dumb pun in its title, and also because of its extensive use of a didgeridoo—which sounds great, anchoring the tune with a rich and satisfying drone, but at the same time seems an over-obvious move for the band that is responsible for having made tribal percussion and hippie-ish mysticism suddenly very popular in indie rock. Perhaps it’s a willful provocation aimed at critics and fans who would like to box their music into narrow categories, a nervy move meant to demonstrate that they’re not in the least bit worried about the small-minded “freak folk” label that continues to be applied to them despite all sonic indications to the contrary. Even so, it’s distracting.

In any case: I stand by my previous statement that Animal Collective is one of the best bands around these days, and just about the only one in indie rock that actually seems important. But I’m just not into Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Water Curses and new directions in indie rock

John Wray has written a very long NY Times piece on what he views as an important trend in indie rock: the computer-and-sampler-aided solo performer, along the lines of Final Fantasy, Panda Bear, and St. Vincent. Personally, I’m suspicious of any argument that claims to see a unifying or centrally important direction in indie music these days: tastes and practices are far too fragmented and divergent for any over-arching trend to emerge. Critical attempts at canon-making seem very much out of place in a musical culture that is so fundamentally de-centered.

That said, I do think Wray is on to something by calling attention to Panda Bear. If any active band actually is casting a relatively long shadow of influence over other indie musicians, it’s Animal Collective (of which Panda Bear is a member). In handful of years since Animal Collective came on the scene, there’s been a sudden preponderance of indie rock records employing naturalistic imagery, off-kilter rhythms, drum-circle percussion, and vocals mixing sweet singing with sharp shouting outbursts. (One recent example: the much-buzzed-about Dodos—who aren’t half-bad, but definitely need to work on shaking off their influences.) Of course, there are also a far greater number of indie rock bands who aren’t doing anything of the sort—the genre has many leaders and many followers, and no stylistic center of gravity. But clearly other bands have been listening to Animal Collective, and have been impressed by what they’ve heard.

I’ve been impressed, too. For me, Animal Collective stands out in contemporary indie music on the combined strength of their songcraft, musicianship, and inventiveness. The band does not rely on typical indie tactics like collage artistry or crate-digging irony: you can point to a Beach Boys harmony here, a reggae-like melodic turn there, but doing so will help you very little in describing the band’s music. And though they pay an unusual amount of attention to the creation of strange (and sometimes unidentifiable) sounds, the band never sacrifices a tune for the sake of novelty in arrangement. Even their weirdest synth stabs and watery gurgles tend to serve a clear purpose in service of the songs: they both buffet and batter against the band’s often sweetly gorgeous melodies; they help establish the oddball rhythms, and also tug against them, and serve as points of transition for sometimes sudden and dramatic musical transformations.

Animal Collective’s latest release, the very brief between-albums EP Water Curses, has more than its share of strange beauty and surprising moments; closing track “Seal Eyes” is particularly striking, with its broken-down piano and sampler-altered vocals, which seem to both float and wobble, their exact shape and dimensions never quite discernible. Nothing on the has the weight and heft of the best material on Strawberry Jams or Feels, but that’s OK—Water Curses is enjoyable on its own small terms, and seems to exist mostly as a new lens for looking at the sound of their previous record before the band moves on to whatever they might do next.