I'm going to start this one by flashing back a bit. Back in June of 2013, I wrote up an overview on my thoughts on all things Animal Collective, putting together brief review blurbs for every album and EP from the band (check it out here if you haven't read it). In said article, I commented on how I didn't really like the group's landmark album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, as much as the rest of the music community did. In fact, I put the somewhat maligned follow-up Centipede Hz above it in my rankings of favorite albums. The reason for this was that, while I liked a great deal of songs from MPP, I didn't feel it was as strong and cohesive of an album as the best work from Animal Collective.
Well, consider this me backpedaling on that remark. At the time, part of my affinity for certain albums and approaches from the group made an album like this frustrating for me. I entered the album, unlike I had done with previous entries, with a strong inclination towards MPP's singles, and felt like the rest of the tracks were lackluster by comparison. Additionally, I ignored the way the album flowed beyond the first three songs (though I still feel like the last three songs are somewhat incongruously arranged). These thoughts were all after my first listen, whereupon I liked the album, but not to the extent of everyone else.
Five listens later, and this album is finally starting to click for me. While songs like "Brother Sport," "Summertime Clothes," "Bluish," and "My Girls" really drew me in initially, upon revisiting the album, "In the Flowers" and "Lion in a Coma" began to draw my attention. The next time, it was "Daily Routine." The time after that, it was "Also Frightened" and "No More Runnin." Then, deciding to take the plunge on more time, still not really feeling more about the album than mild interest, I found myself loving it all the way through. The last piece of the puzzle to fall into place was "Taste," which turned me off the first four times, but, for whatever reason, wormed its way into my head on the fifth listen. (I wrote about why I felt that it wasn't my cup of tea at first and why I changed my mind about it in this little write-up here.)
So, let's go over the points that made me realize why I really like the album at this point.
1.) The Flow
I mentioned that the flow (or initial noticing of a lack thereof) irked me the first time through. I feel like growing to like each individual song definitely helped with this, as I grew to expect when the next song would come and see how each connected and linked to the one that followed it. To me, this is most prominent in the transition from "In the Flowers" to "My Girls," or the integral lead-in to "Bluish" that begins with the ending to "Daily Routine."
Like any favorite album, what keeps you hanging on and listening is the anticipation for what will come next. Simply put, your favorite albums shouldn't be ones you want to turn off midway because you just finished your favorite song. (Although, MPP doesn't have that problem for me because it ends on its strongest note… but you shouldn't ignore what I said just for that reason.) On that same note, you shouldn't want to skip around willy-nilly just because there's a bunch of filler between the good stuff. Personally speaking, as of right now, MPP has nothing but good stuff.
2.) The Songs
This one seems kinda obvious, but it's still worth mentioning. Every song (as is expected from Animal Collective) has its own unique nuances and quirks, and each is able to stand on its own. As much as I've come to enjoy listening to this album as a whole when I want to gain a new level of appreciation of it, I've gone back to each song individually, separated from its context on the album, at least once. "Summertime Clothes" has been too catchy to ignore, "Brother Sport" is one of my go-to "get pumped" songs, "Daily Routine" reveals new layers with every listen, and "Taste" is a fantastic amalgamation of every phase of AnCo's career.
This is another element of a great album: you should want to revisit pieces from it even when you may not want to listen to the entirety of the album again. This doesn't mean you should disregard the album altogether; it simply means that you should be able to appreciate the album as a whole as well as the entities that comprise it as their own pieces.
3.) Its Place in Music Culture
There's no way of sugarcoating it: Merriweather Post Pavilion is the album that brought Animal Collective into the mainstream. Everyone and their mother was praising this album with an avalanche of laurels back in 2009 and, really, compared to every other album in AnCo's discography, it's easy to see why. The pop elements of the band are at the forefront and, unlike some of their more impenetrable efforts (*cough cough* Danse Manatee *cough cough*), the hooks, catchy as all hell, are laid bare for all the memorability they can muster.
Yet, I'd argue it's a very important album. It's one of the landmark instances of the indie crossing over into the mainstream. By popular standards, this album is quite unusual (even if it is one of the most "normal" AnCo albums). The synths can be somewhat grating, the time signatures are bizarre, and there's a song with a freaking didgeridoo, for God's sake. Yet, the pop elements win out and this album was warmly embraced by the public almost immediately (although maybe it's just due to the fact that "My Girls" is on this thing).
4.) Its Place in AnCo's Career
This is ultimately why I decided I really like this album. Merriweather Post Pavilion does a lot of things right, but it's an important benchmark between two phases of Animal Collective. The pop elements and use of synths first became prominent in the previous album, Strawberry Jam. The smooth transitions between songs and the integration of Animal Collective's live format in studio albums would improved to perfection in their next album, Centipede Hz.
But (similarly to how I feel that if AnCo didn't put out Sung Tongs immediately after Here Comes the Indian, they might not have integrated their more folk-esque elements as regularly), Merriweather Post Pavilion is an album that I feel was crucial for Animal Collective to release when they did as a building block for their future efforts. As the write-up on "Taste" that I linked to above states, by incorporating pretty much everything they had previously done, Animal Collective managed to make a palatable and precise distillation of everything that sonically makes who they are and, perhaps more importantly, figure out what parts of that identity are significant to keep carrying forward.
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