New Animal Collective album: Merriweather Post Pavilion (preview)
Posted by eightcentsaday on October 25, 2008
Animal Collective have released the track listing for their new album — Merriweather Post Pavilion — due January 2009, and some enterprising folks have assembled a preview of the album from live bootlegs.
I generally eschew leaks and the like, except for albums I’m anxious about. I downloaded the new Cure before its official release, because I had high hopes for it (4:13 Dream is just a drummer shy of the golden age of Cure live albums) and needed to overcome my potential disappointment as soon as possible (turns out it’s their best album since Wish).
I trust Animal Collective enough to wait for their albums, hitherto. I skipped the leaked Strawberry Jam tracks and waited patiently for The Real Thing. But next January seems a long way away, and I was intrigued (damnit) by certain statements about the new album (“classical”?). So in spite of my preference for the fullness of their studio work over the (paler) live incarnations, I’ve gambled on the “preview”, and not been disappointed.
It’s impossible to say yet how representative of the album it is but this samizdat edition sounds very well in its own right. It’s pretty cleanly recorded, and it flows well, in spite of its bower-bird assemblage from different shows.
How does it compare with previous efforts ? Firstly, it seems a sparser, more sprawling Animal Collective. It might be overdubbed to hell in the studio, we’ll have to wait and see. The songwriting seems more collaborative than the last album, and many of the tracks resonate with an artful blending of aspects distinctly Avey and Panda.
What especially impressed me is the bond between Avey and Panda that comes across, especially in their singing together. Their friendship is in sweet, abundant evidence, as is their ease and comfort with singing against and off of each other, complementing each other. However representative this preview is of the studio album, their partnership is something special. At the risk of impairing my enjoyment of the album when it finally comes, I’ll be playing this preview a lot in the meantime.
Update: As you’re probably all too aware, leaked fragments of the new studio album have started showing up on blogs, earning visits from the Web Sheriff demanding takedowns (without prejudice). If you’re still hungering for unheard Animal Collective what you really want to do is to plumb the heady depths of this staggeringly comprehensive collection of Animal Collective Rarities and Bootlegs.
Update: Here’s an interesting article about bootlegging, its history and the state of the art.
