How solid of a record you find Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion depends, ultimately, on how you listen to music. If you zoom through 600 albums a month and never turn back, value risk-taking production and quirky reverb-soaked vocals over structural complexity and replay value-then this is certainly the album for you. Not that there is anything wrong with this approach. Animal Collective values it as well, showcasing the same weirdo-psych-pop craftsmanship in every record the band has hitherto released.
But if you treasure complicated songwriting, then the problems with Merriweather Post Pavilion are evident from the very first track. "In the Flowers" starts out satisfyingly, Noah Lennox ("Panda Bear") singing cautiously over an ominous guitar (and typical accompanying nature sounds), and the song continuing its mysterious atmosphere until a big surprise drops about three minutes in. The surprise, one must admit, is pretty neat.
But when Lennox says, "There we could be dancing, no more missing you while I'm gone," one predicts that he'll repeat the same melody again, and again, and again before moving on, degrading the song into the simple predictability that pervades almost every modern pop record. And degrade he does.
This constant pattern-of surprising listeners and then drowning us in redundancy-is found in nearly every composition on Merriweather Post Pavilion. Which is a shame, because nearly every composition also contains an irresistible hook very much worth singing along to (despite how much of a challenge this might be, such as on the delicious-and yes, repetitive-"Lion in a Coma").
Animal Collective is gifted at penning tunes capable of crossing over into the pop-radio crowd and undermining the very foundations of its taste. And occasionally repetition works to the band's advantage. The band does its best work in "Summertime Clothes," layering on melody after melody until the song's overwhelmingly explosive conclusion. Closer "Brothersport" begins in the expected catchy fashion before breaking off into a strange jam that somehow manages to fit into the song's theme. And even lyrically, the band unleashes some poignant and provocative moments, such as in the identity-crisis of "Taste," where they ask, "Am I really all the things that are outside of me?"
Regardless of how expert Animal Collective is at forcing us to tap our feet-or at magically making the electronic sound organic (as is the case in nearly every track on display)-the songwriting can't consistently live up to the refreshing and challenging compositions of contemporaries such as Radiohead or Spoon.
One question critics tend to ask when considering an album is, "Is this what it wants to be?" To Merriweather Post Pavilion, with the exception of a track or two, I would give a wholehearted yes. But we must also ask, "Is what it wants to be really all that great?" This is where Merriweather Post Pavilion disappoints.
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