Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes (Domino 2009)
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion / Domino
It seems both obvious and appropriate that Animal Collective's ninth album is being released on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, especially considering the fever pitch of excitement currently surrounding both the Collective and our newly minted 44th president... But something about this release has been bothering me since I was awaken to its immense hype by both Pitchfork and The Chicago Sun-Times after a deep autumnal slumber. It was a vague resentment, an uneasy awareness that for all of the positive press being lobbed like happy hand grenades in its direction, something was off.
I listened anyway. I played it at work, I played it at home, I played it in the background of countless GChats, I played it on the CTA, I suggested it to people, I talked about it with those who had already heard. All of the pieces seemed in place for a praiseworthy post-millennial indie archetype. And after a ton of listens, I reckoned it was a good thing that it had already garnered a 9.6 and kids were hailing it as the album of the year after less than a full week. Part of me wanted - wants - to believe that this is the hope Obama's been relentlessly invoking in a very marginal context: Indie kid stereotypes who used to confine themselves to Built to Spill or The Boy Least Likely To are opening their eyes to an album that draws a direct line to West African tribal music and avant-garde noise records (and not just, y'know, Daft Punk). If a college radio freshman thinks Merriweather Post Pavilion is great, how much greater the chance that they will follow the Paw Tracks to Repo in April and believe in that, too? This is supposed to be what makes the Internet essential: It shrinks this - our, everybody's - world enough to make it relatable for even the most hopeless xenophobic (The best commentary to this end vis-à-vis the Collective has, shockingly, been on Hipster Runoff).
Yet despite those astute observations, the real discomfort I experienced with Merriweather stems from Hua Hsu's feature article for the January/February edition of The Atlantic Monthly. The gist: Hsu explores the elimination of "whiteness" in American culture through a rough timeline that starts with minorities mimicking whites to "fit in" at the top of the 20th century and ends where we are now as a society paying post-racial lip service that, he posits, has reversed itself. Of particular interest is "the identity crisis plaguing well-meaning, well-off white kids in a post-white world:" Hsu says a vacuum has formed where white self-denial is a path both to acceptance and authenticity.
Merriweather Post Pavilion is the soundtrack of that self-denial. All of these songs drown themselves with needlessly dense sonic tricks in a dramatic effort to move away from the pleasant psych-folk of earlier, less ambitious works like Hollinndagain or Sung Tongs. That in itself would not be a problem, except that their bid for post-everythingness is so transparent. There is a deep current of desperation running through songs like "My Girls" and "Brother Sport" that begs for a listener to hear the hip-hop rhythms, the unending samplers, the universal synth sounds, the musical melting pot this thing is supposed to represent. Drop any continent on earth and it wouldn't matter: Stripped of the bells and whistles, this is still an indie-pop album. A very average, white-guy indie-pop album that will reject listeners who came expecting a transcendent experience and got mere assimilation instead. It assimilates with the current indie landscape, an exercise in deception: This sounds like something you would want to like in the interest of furthering minority forms of music, but you don't because it's the same old thing. It's no closer to post-racial harmony than Death Cab for Cutie or, worse, Pavement.
It's only fair at this point to acknowledge the obvious ad hominem argument: The reason I point it out in the first place is because I myself am a white male. It's logical to assume that, because I have a blog and gave a fuck enough about Animal Collective to write about them, I would feel vulnerable. Further, by rejecting the idea that I am a part of this indie kid stereotype, I am instead personifying it. And how many essays have you read indicting the very act of rock criticism as culturally white?
But my discomfort doesn't merely come from identifying with three white guys (it used to be four) or its fans; my discomfort comes from the fact that people are pledging their blind allegiance to this album for what it is not rather than for what it is. The band projects an image of artful dodgers bent on bringing transcontinental hipsterdom right to your hard drive; several have taken the bait, proclaiming Merriweather as a product and paladin of the self-congratulating online community and, by proxy, the new cultural mainstream. It isn't. It is still a sonic defense mechanism meant to shield itself from a lack of culture.
As with most things culture terrorism-related, a word should be spared for Diplo. Great question from a fellow Audiversitarian: "If Animal Collective are racist, what does that make Diplo? Hitler?" Given that he singlehandedly imported baile funk and helped bring new meaning to the worthlessly nebulous "world music" tag in the early aughts, it follows that Diplo should carry the weight of this white rejection as he delves further into DJ Benzi mixtapes or another MIA collaboration in an effort to disguise how much of a pasty white Brit he is. The difference is that Diplo lived these subcultures: He went to Brazil, he went to West Africa, he met the sources, he inhabited the environment to the best of his ability - which isn't to say that going somewhere is a one-up for authenticity (See also: sheltered study abroad students), but AnCo never say in their liner notes that this was culled straight from a coupé decallé cut or open themselves up to Angolan mini-tours. They are armchair globalists, content to rip the sounds of the world from the safety of Williamsburg. They are a reflection of their wired-in, zoned-out audience. Diplo spins real vinyl and plays to the crowds he stole from and has used urumee drums. He engages these cultures on a personal level and never worries about where the references are because they speak for themselves. Animal Collective make no such effort; devoid even of TV on the Radio's soul chants or LCD Soundsystem's winking funk grooves, AnCo dress songs about girls and seasons and hanging out - boring topics that don't even strive for unidentifiable weirdness like, say, food (Strawberry Jam) - in sounds that imply worldliness but demonstrate none and, furthermore, have zero staying power. That's not a testament to influence, that's an insult.
In other words, it's not that this album is bad. It's good, I guess... And that's the whole point: Instead of creating some kind of new beat thriving on kwaito and The Neptunes, Animal Collective disguise nothing as something in their quest for greatness. Like Panda Bear's Person Pitch, this is not especially remarkable on a more annoyingly grand scale. On past efforts, the group ventured well into the freak-folk forests; at least there, they sounded secure in their embrace of 60s British psych and folk. All they seem like they're trying to do now is embrace anything else, but they can't escape (even when their fans can).
So really, are Animal Collective racist? Perhaps not explicitly (or even consciously), but there is a definite anxiety about being a minority that resonates in their music and in their fans. Despite their urge for reinvention, they come off as second-rate pan-ethnic appropriators. If I haven't already, I'll probably contradict myself in a future review. There are more coherent critiques for how boring this is, sharper wit to pierce through the dense reverb that permeates every single song... But I wonder how much enthusiasm people will have for this album in four months, nevermind four years. Is it post-racial? Is it that permanent? Is it four stars, 9.6, 5/5? I guess we'll have to wait and see. It's only been official for a day.
