When the sun goes down we’ll go out again
Sometimes when I listen to music I wonder how I’ll feel about it in twenty years. Will I still have a taste for quirky, avant-garde music or will my tastes mellow into lackluster easy-listening tunes of the decade (…or worse yet contemporary Christian music)? Animal Collective’s ninth album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, is one that I certainly will always have appreciation for, but I may just think I was oddly fanatical for loving it back in my youthful days of 22.
Named after an outdoor venue in Maryland, the album commences with In the Flowers. The love song is about a dancer and spending time with her rather than being alone. Listen for the epic explosion at 2:30, the lyrics accompanying the climax are probably my favorite: And when our eyes will meet there/ We will recognize nothing’s wrong/ And I wouldn’t feel so selfish/ I won’t be this way very long. Although I do love when the line To hold you in time is repeated towards the end.
I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status/ I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls. True story. This song is so clearly executed, the meaning is undeniable. It shows growth on the band’s part and a serious outlook towards the future. I’m suspecting a different writer based on the life circumstances of the last, but they both have a family oriented tone. Also Frightened is undeniably harder to comprehend than the last. Although colloquialisms are repeated until they get stuck in our heads, the statements are bold, while remaining ambiguous.
Oh boy, summer love! Summertime Clothes is the other single on the album. The catchy repetition in the beginning of the song leads up to the impeding vocals coming in at :50, heightened again with the claps at 1:15. The lyrics are much more like a traditional (read: less eccentric) song, my favorites being Rip off your sleeves and I’ll ditch my socks/ Dance to the songs from the cars as they pass, those words don’t really describe me in the summer per se, but yet they resonate with summer so well. Daily Routine is less of a routine and more of a lifestyle song. I think the next time someone tries to wake me up I may sing to them “Just a sec more in my bed,” but then again I may not. I’m really not used to lyrics like this. It’s cute… It’s a love song… but my life experiences haven’t taken me that far, nor will they for some time. The next track, Guys Eyes breaks down into a minute long cacophony in the middle of the song, repeating only the words need her.
Taste is a good song to listen to before a shopping trip. The lyrics are so true. Try not to judge me on my kind of taste/ And don’t go changing clothes when they don’t like yours. It mostly reminds me of junior high, but I suppose we are all guilty of this to some extent. The chant, Am I really all the things that are outside of me, is very powerful in this song. Maybe others place our worth in the things we surround ourselves with, but I am certainly not going to make my own worth in the things outside of me. Animal Collective won’t either.
Is that a dijarido? I had camper at a summer camp that I worked at a few summers ago. We thought she had an allergic reaction to something she ate because her cheeks were so swollen that we were afraid they were going to obstruct her breathing. When her mom was called, it turns out this little camper had a nervous habit of biting her cheeks. That’s how I really understand the tension of this song, they reference cheeks being raw from the practice. Animal Collective runs through the lyrics so quickly in the beginning of the song that the parroting of Lion in a Coma creates an interesting juxtaposition within the rest of the song.
The album ends on an extremely strong note. Brother Sport is such a catchy and motivational song, and it is very clear that their music is uniquely their own while drawing on influences of music from around the world. This album has already received mentions of “Best of 2009.” Whether those comments were made hastily so, I have yet to decide, but it will be a long time before I grow out of this type of innovative music.
