Critique of Everyday Life: Merriweather Post Pavillion
Unlike the nostalgic Americana of Fleet Foxes, Jenny Lewis, Sufjan Stevens et al, Animal Collective arguably represents something like a contemporary Americana. This isn’t something I could ever have said confidently before — though critics have tended to dance around it by designating them “Freak Folk” — because their psychedelic sound tends to distract from the folk aspect of their work. We only have to point out that great Vashti Bunyan collaboration they did, though, to see AC take an explicitly folk direction. And I’d argue that MPP in particular is a culmination of that folk content. As a coherent album, it’s about family, everyday working life, the fetishism of taste, fashion and appearances in general, and, ultimately, the struggle to cultivate an inner life that is rich, real and impervious to those draining banalities. I think if you listen to it on those terms, it becomes a deeply relatable record that describes the content of American life not just in general or even in the aesthetic context of Americanas past, but in the context of the objective conditions of American life today.
That said, I also think that if you’re patient enough with many of the songs on MPP to let them evolve (they do tend to flourish into their full form rather slowly), you’ll find some pretty rewarding pop-melodic composition that turns out to be more hypnotic and addictive the more you listen. AC really is, shockingly, one of the only bands I can think of that is so unique-sounding in the whole indie-pop universe. The vocals, of course, are incomparable, to say nothing of the percussion, songwriting and studio antics that make their albums such great, slow-burning recordings.
