M.V.P.

Hey. The reason this review is rubbish is because I wrote it for Tasty zine. I must be doing something right because they're still sending me free crap (suckers!!). Although you think it's rubbish, I'm fairly sure it's the best M.P.P. review on the web.





Animal Collective's 'Merriweather Post Pavilion' is the album where they do 'what they've been threatening'. What is that, exactly? Simple transitions in song structure or in synth-plundering doesn't tend to propel the Great indie rock band into the Magnificent - yet M.P.P. is Animal Collective's highest platform yet, and by a long way. The people who liked 'em but hated everything since 'Feels', the people who thought 'Strawberry Jam' was as carefully produced as a flaccid turd, the people who just didn't love 'em yet are all wide awake. M.P.P. is the product - the nigh-on dang perfect accumulation of Animal Collective show favourites - and the latest, hugest Animal Collective dimension to date. What it does, what it does spot on - it engrosses you. You don't have to try to listen to M.P.P. It's a feast for the as yet unsated Anomal Collective fan. Which is pretty much most of us. It would be stupid, of course, to warn you of consuming the richest indie rock cake, to exercise restraint, to leave room for afters - yet you're going to burst at some point (I'm warning you).

'My Girls' does for 2009 what other songs did in 2008 and 2007; the proliferation of "I want" / "I just want"s on the album betray a shift into songs of familial bonds and bonding. Repetition, even song-sequencing - all the rhythmic devices transpire to make music to put you in a trance-like state. "Noone should call you a dreamer" nudges home the message - hey, Animal Collective are like the Beach Boys or something, the All Boy Summer Fun Band, no vicious. 'Summertime Clothes' comes in behind 'Also Frightened' as tremendously as anything off 'Strawberry Jam', and 'Taste' is reminiscent of the moment on HEALTH's debut when 'Glitter Pills' kicks in, "and I want to walk around with you, and I want to walk around with you", and so on - there are so many different ideas going on, layered even in individual songs. For instance, the jaw harp and the near-indecipherable lyrics of 'Lion In A Coma', my favourite song and the most immediately hypnotising song on the album. It is not easy, therefore, to define M.P.P. as an electronic or indie rock or 'freak folk' album - just as the next instalment of Animal Collective, returning to 'Feels' / pre-'Feels' territory in song structure (or destructive, more messy) yet carrying on from 'Strawberry Jam' too, minus to oft-terided 'tinny' production, shoving in highlights from along the way, more 'Runnin' songs, 'Person Pitch' dreaming, and the live vitality of 'Brother Sport'. It is an album which people will look back and trip up on, and very probably trip out on.

P.S. listen to a new Animal Collective song from some BBC session

P.P.S. 'terided'?