You may think to yourself, "No. Anderson Cooper and Animal Collective have nothing in common." You would be mistaken.
Last week, "AC360°" aired live from the heart of the Middle East showing us a) how supremely devoted he is to his craft and b) how a satellite delay totally ruins live TV. So then, aside from physical appearance - AC's black suit, salt-hair combo passes for a panda getup - and similarity of initials, the newsman and the noise-men both prove highly competent talents who get off on too many distracting gimmicks.
Animal Collective's pitfall - their pointless Middle East broadcast, if you will - has always been the tricky racket they pile atop their pop tunes. On "Merriweather Post Pavillion," Panda Bear and Avey Tare cleanse the let's-do-it-because-we-can from their systems.
The resulting hour of music comes on like a streamlined space jam. Wacky, dreamy and astonishingly focused, each of these pulsating electro-pop compositions steadily lays a groundwork from which to spring wildly inventive melodies. "Lion in a Coma," for instance, bleeps and buzzes along on a heavy bass line and playful cadence before shooting off a bouncy, double-timed refrain: "lion in a coma/lion in a coma."
These songs lay in wait. Unsuspecting patterns of repetition bide their time in the manner of, "Wait for it, wait for it. Now!" And boom, you're floored by a trippy vocal wallop that comes out of nowhere. "Bluish" unfolds in much this way - gurgling psychedelia pounces with soul-tinged Brian Wilson harmonies bathed in acid.
"Summertime Clothes" needs no such breathing room. Put simply, it's a brilliant pop cut - immediate and breezy as its title suggests. Is it blasphemy to speak of a "Beatlesque" quality? Probably. But for four and a half minutes, you're pretty sure this is the greatest song ever written.
Big picture, "Merriweather" is a record that vindicates the band's told-you-so supporters. Maybe the rest of us were, in fact, too dense to appreciate the single-chord noise jams and seemingly pointless bang-pot-pan percussion. More likely, Animal Collective has finally justified the art-school hype by making a good album. A really, really good album. There's nothing here in the way of weird for weird's sake, no tribal excursions, and no election night will.i.am teleportation stunts. Take note, AC.
