Animal Collective Leak Their Own Damn Album

noah | October 29, 2008 1:30 am

Usually, we use The Last Word to collect the closing bon mots from the week’s biggest record reviews. But last night’s listening party for the new album by Animal Collective–Merriweather Post Pavilion, which doesn’t come out until the calendar flips to 2009–seemed worthy of a spin through Google, at the very least. A few takeaways from the event after the jump.

• “The record’s got the layered harmonies of Panda Bear’s solo turn, but not the bubblegum pop, opting instead for the stoned vibe of a friendly drum circle or an house record spun at 4 a.m. But if you take anything from this: The riotous ‘Summertime Clothes’ will be your summer jam in ’09. If they can keep this thing from leaking.” [Village Voice]

• “While tracks like the low-key ‘No More Runnin’’ are more conventionally song-oriented, the focus here is on constantly shifting textures and moods, like the central riff of ‘Daily Routine,’ which sounds like a bowling ball being thrown for a strike across the keys of an organ, or the moment on ‘Guys Eyes’ that suggests nothing so much as a backwards loop of a piano being dropped from the roof of a monastery.” [RS]

• “Appropriately, the album ends with the line ‘You’ve got so much inside/ Let it come right out,’ which, in the context of the new record, feels like an incredibly apt description of where AC stands artistically as we roll into 2009. I guess, to sum it up, all I can say is that now I’m really fucking excited for 1/20/2009. It’s going to be epic.” [CHOCOLATE BOBKA]

• “It’s strange how someone telling you the end of a movie could ruin it, but someone telling you the end of a record just makes you stoked to get there. Right? ” [8008]