Wednesday night was the Animal Collective listening part at Plastic People records in London. Fortunate for us, both staff writer Rob H. and a guest writer by the name of Jon were able to attend. Here’s what they thought:
Rob’s Evaluation
After having my bag searched and being frisked I am allowed to enter Plastic People, the venue for tonight’s Merriweather Post Pavilion listening party. Walking down the stairs I can hear that the party has already started as ‘My Girls’ jumps through the floor, igniting my excitement.
I indulge in a free beer from the bar before entering the room where the action is really happening. I push aside the curtain and I see what on first glance looks like a nightclub full of people on a strong sedative. They’re all in the dark, sitting strewn around the floor and walls, barely speaking a word. Of course I understand, this is an important moment for a lot of these people; Animal Collective have one of the most devoted fan bases in the world and tonight is the opportunity for a small core of them to hear their favourite band’s new album.
So duly, I find a free spot against a wall and join them. The room is so dark that writing notes was difficult and those of us who were writing down our thoughts had to do so by the light of our phones. It all added to the atmosphere.
Here’s what I made of the songs on two listens:
The album opens with the haunting ‘In the Flowers’ which starts sparse and otherworldly. Listening to it in the dark it almost feels as though you are floating through space, and then all of a sudden when the songs bursts into a fit of psychedelic electronica you’ve gone into hyperspace. This energy lasts for a few minutes before setting you back down again to return to its haunting plucked guitar string origins. A great opener.
Next is ‘My Girls’, the song that has been highlighted as the stand out track. It’s obvious why this one is getting so much attention, instantly catching your ear and demanding to be heard it’s a brilliant track. The first half features mainly vocals and the great bouncy electronic style that is heard on Strawberry Jam. The second half when the bass and drums kick in fully this song really hits its stride. There is no way to listen to this song without wanting to move. Everyone in the room was at least nodding their heads along with the sprightly tune and grinning with the spontaneous bursts of happiness that erupt in the song.
The album has been noted for its heavy use of bass and that first becomes clear in third track ‘Also Frightened’. The stuttering bass that punctuates the song is so loud that I can feel the wall that I’m sitting against quivering. During the song the music often cuts to beautiful cascading vocals that sound like a Beatles style harmony from ‘Paperback Writer’.
The vocals are at the forefront for the next track ‘Summer Time Clothes’. During the verses there is a mechanical like effect on Avey’s voice, but during the chorus there’s nothing holding him back as he proclaims “I want to walk around with you!” The only way for me to describe this is experimental bubble gum pop, and it’s fantastic.
The bass is amped up even further on ‘Daily Routine’, which ushers in the dense middle section of Merriweather Post Pavilion. The vocals are drenched in reverb and there is heavy use of a drum machine whilst lower in the mix there is a hint of tribal drumming. The second half of the song pans out into just vocals over heavily reverbed piano which is quite spooky and an overall moving listen.
‘Bluish’ begins slowly and builds into a swirling song. The vocals are playful and feature several nice harmonies, which are complimented by what sounds like glockenspiel low in the mix. The swirling sound goes on throughout the song which makes listening to it feel like being spun in a washing machine whilst out at sea.
‘Guys Eyes’ enters with a deep rumbling that sound like a behemoth kicking into life. Finally it gets going with a bass heavy, chugging middle section with layered vocals dancing across the surface. Finally towards the end the vocals come together into a repeated triumphant chorus of “What I Want To!”.
The heartbeat bass kick throughout ‘Taste’ is maybe what is the first thing about the song that you notice. Then come the “game boy” scales that run through the track whilst the vocal interplay tickles at your attention. The call and receive style is used to full effect here and it sounds like they may be worlds apart as they yell to make themselves heard. In the end they sing in unison “Am I really all the things that are outside of me?” sounding as excited as a child who has found out they can go out and play instead of going to school.
The bouncy sound that runs throughout ‘Lion in a Coma’ sounds like it could be a reverbed didgeridoo, but I can’t be certain. The song is dominated by a surging bass line and almost incoherent vocals that are low in the mix.
‘No More Runnin’ is the first slow song for a while and gives the album a much needed calming down. It starts off with a trip-hop style bass and wind-tunnel vocals. The song is overall very murky and could be said to be touching on a bluesy side of Animal Collective. There is a sonic distortion in the song that tickles at the back of your mind and creates a dark soundscape.
The slower pace is quickly done away with as closer ‘Brothersport’ comes to the fore. It’s clear that most of the people at the party (myself included) have already heard this song, but it’s never sounded better than at the end of this fantastic album. The chanted lyrics over the dancey, swirling electronics are too good to ignore and several people get up to dance whilst the rest bop their heads enthusiastically. This song brings a second wind to the party and when it finishes you feel as though you want the album to go on even longer, but all you can do is play the album again, and again, and again.
Overall this album is 55 minutes of almost perfection. It’s an album that needs just three things to be fully appreciated; your time, your attention and to be played loud!
– Rob H.
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Jon’s Evaluation: “My Journey to Merriweather Post Pavilion”
How do you review an album that means the world to a small group of people, but to the majority of the world, doesn’t mean anything? Going into the Merriweather Post Pavilion listening party in London, I found myself somewhere in the middle of these two groups. I was very excited about hearing the album, but I had managed to fight the urge to download bootleg performances of the songs, or even to download the proper ‘Brother Sport’ leak. Before 6:40 pm on December 3, 2008, I was a Merriweather Post Pavilion virgin.
I arrived at Plastic People records around 4:30 because I didn’t have anything better to do with my time, and getting lost is one of my strengths. For some reason, I was expecting a record store. Instead, I found a barred up door which read “Pla Peopie” in broken red-translucent plastic letters. I assumed I was in the wrong place, and went to go find some place to verify that this is where the event was happening. After thirty minutes of wandering around, I found an O2 store and used their iPhone display to find the event invitation. It turns out I had the right location the first time.
I returned around 5:40 to find a few other people standing outside. Around 6:00, we figured that we weren’t going to be let in for a while and grabbed a pint at a pub just down the street. Thirty minutes later, we would try again, and found out that they were letting people in. I felt quite official as the bouncer crossed my name off of the guest list as I walked into the venue.
In reality, Plastic People records is a tiny basement dub-step club divided into two rooms. The front room, which was the first one that one encountered, was a fairly non-descript bar with a few tables and that was about it. There were probably thirty people or so there when I arrived, and I went to the bar to grab a drink while I patiently waited for the music to start. I assumed this would be around 7:30.
I was caught off guard when the music got louder at 6:40, and someone I had met earlier that night walked by me and said, “This sounds like it.” The album started with no announcements or indication of any kind. I walked, still a bit dumbfounded, into the other room of the venue, which was unlit except for the DJ’s equipment, and was painted entirely black. It was about a twenty five foot on all sides, had a post in the middle, and had a bench built in to one wall. Speakers were hung in all of the corners, and there were two large subwoofers on either side of the DJ. I eventually took a seat in the middle of the floor and started to absorb the album.
Armed with a small notebook which I had written the track-list in, I listened to the entire album once through and took no notes. Instead, I simply checked off the songs as they came, so that I could keep track of my place in the album. One by one, they came and went, and my jaw inched closer and closer to the floor. By the time ‘Brother Sport’ was over, I was blown away. After the first time through, they put some filler music on and I attempted to describe what I had just heard to myself.
The first thing that came to my mind was how much more accessible I found the album to be compared to any of their other releases. There are lots of straight pop songs on this album. Person Pitch certainly came to mind with the gorgeous harmonies, especially on the first half of the disc, but by the end it sounded very much like Animal Collective using their combined talents to make an incredibly cohesive record.
Each track on Merriweather Post Pavilion swells and shrinks at just the right moments, adding and subtracting layers to keep a balance between sanity and sonic overload. The album is paced in a similar way to the songs themselves with the last three tracks being some immense kind of genius. This pacing is enhanced by the many seamless flows from one song into the next. The song breaks in some places are apparent, but when the next song starts up, it always sounds like it was right where the other song stopped.
They ended up playing the album twice more before the end of the night, and while I gained additional insight with each listen, my initial jaw-drop reaction remained with each listen. The second time through, I took track-by-track notes while I was listening. It is hard for me to associate audio-memories with these notes as I have only heard the album three times, but it may give those who haven’t heard it a general feel.
‘In Flowers’ begins sounding a lot like it could have been a track from Person Pitch. There are luscious harmonies both vocally and instrumentally. About a minute and a half in, a beat breaks out like something I have never heard from the Animal Collective camp before. It’s not the type of effected-drum set beats that have led their songs in the pass, but much more of a bass-heavy, dance inspired beats. This ends up being a reoccurring theme throughout the album.
‘In Flowers’ fades seamlessly into ‘My Girls’ in a very ambient kind of way. An interesting syncopated beat comes in about a minute and a half into the song, and builds into a kind of audio euphoria. Isolated, the beat may sound like it came from a modern chart-topper, but the rest is unmistakably and wonderfully pure Animal Collective.
After another seamless transition, ‘Also Frightened’ comes in with an incredibly accented 3/4 beat. I didn’t make a lot of notes from this song, and do not remember it that well. This song fades out into silence instead of another song, marking the first point on the album where nothing is going on.
‘Summertime Clothes’ begins strong in 4/4 and with a heavy lower end. The transition between these two tracks may be the most abrupt on the album. Like ‘My Girls’, this track seems to have a top-40 dance beat, but this one seems even more accessible to me. The lines “I want to walk around with you.” were some of the few that were stuck in my head all the way home from the party, and this may be one of my favorite tracks on the album.
‘Daily Routine’ begins as an somewhat erie, jittery odd waltz. There are beats are added here and there giving a very uncertain feel to it. The singing here is some of the least harmonized on the CD, with Avey (I believe) almost chanting rather then singing in parts. This sounds more like ground that Animal Collective has covered before more then any other track on the CD up until this point to my ears, but in a good way. This fades into bubble sounds which start off ‘Bluish’. I don’t remember the song too well, but I believe it kept this underwater tone throughout, and had a slower 2/4 feel to it.
‘Guys Eyes’ begins with what I have described as “crazy noises”, and the drums don’t come in until about the forty second mark. The song almost gains an odd jazz feel at this point with a swung 4/4 time signature.
To be honest, from ‘Bluish’ to ‘Taste’, which came after ‘Guys Eyes’, I have very little memory of the CD. I wrote that ‘Taste’ has a really cool syncopated bass drum part, but that’s all I remember. I heard someone commenting that that song had changed most noticeably from bootlegs, but I’ll have to take his word for it.
‘Lion In a Coma’ on the other hand absolutely blew my mind. If you haven’t inferred at this point, I’m a percussionist, and get really excited about things like complex time signatures. I got so excited by ‘Lion In a Coma’, that I actually wrote out the beat. It’s in 9/8 and clearly grouped into two measure phrases. The whole thing gives a very unpredictable feel, and gave the song a very African vibe.
‘No More Runnin’ is the cool-down session between ‘Lion’ and ‘Brother Sport’. It is far and away the slowest and most mellow track on the album, with a focus on harmonies instead of beats. It is beautiful, and it’s placement is nearly perfect.
Some albums go out with a bang. Merriweather Post Pavilion does one better, and ends with ‘Brother Sport’. This song is brilliant, and I am almost mad at myself for not listening to it before coming out. The song builds and builds into a tribal frenzy with repeating vocals and outrageous beats. There is a break-down middle section in the middle where the vocals drop out, and eventually this relieves itself into another segment where the vocals come back in, and the beat changes but stays strong. The vocals quiet a little bit while the background noise builds until there is one more subtle explosion (if there can be such a thing). Eventually, it fades out and leaves a wonderful lingering noise in the air.
After only three listens, it is difficult to tell whether or not this album is as good as I think it is, but all sings point to something incredible. That said, I honestly don’t see much breakout potential for the band with Merriweather Post Pavilion as it doesn’t sacrifice any of the eccentricities that Animal Collective has become known for in its previous records.
Following the third listen, Avey Tare and Geologist, who had been mingling with the audience, made their way to the DJ booth to play a great set. I had to run early to catch a train, but I didn’t recognize a single song that was played. They seemed to be having a great time, and I congratulated them on the album before I left. They struck me as some of the most down to earth musicians I have ever met.
I left feeling only slightly less anxious then I felt when I came in. I can’t wait to hear this album again and write about it when I can call up the songs at a whim to hear them again. Right now, I can only come to the most obvious conclusion that Merriweather Post Pavilion is a record which leaves the listener wanting much more after three consecutive listens.
-Jon
Thanks again to Jon for his evaluation as well as for providing the photos. The entire set can be viewed here.
Merriweather Post Pavilion is out on January 12th in the UK and on January 20th in the US on Domino Records.
