Why You Should Listen to Animal Collective

I hope to post a comprehensive review of Animal Collective’s massive new LP, Merriweather Post Pavilion, in the coming week, but in the meanwhile I’d like to take a moment to urge everyone reading this to bring this band into your lives. In 1984, the Minutemen opened “History Lesson, Pt. II” with the timeless line, “Our band could be your life.” Few bands can ever hope to achieve the level of greatness needed to become someone’s everything. Over the past decade, Animal Collective has produced an oeuvre that is as diverse, exciting, challenging, and consistent as that of any band during the same period. And yes, that includes Radiohead. Begin with 1999’s Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished, where gentle vocals melt beneath grating high frequencies, and move forward to Here Comes the Indian, where tribal meanderings replace coherent song structures. Then AC gave us progressively poppier efforts, from the organic Sung Tongs to the electronically influenced Strawberry Jam, to 2009’s magnum opus, Merriweather Post Pavilion. Their latest release isn’t even one month old, and the group has already dropped a terrific song that’s nothing like anything they tracked for MPP. “What Would I Want Sky” is a seven-minute electronic piece with sampled vocals that makes a case for its being classed as house music. Not to be outdone by their works as a collective, member Avey Tare has recorded a project made jointly with his wife that the pair released backwards, and member Panda Bear released one of the decade’s best albums with 2007’s Person Pitch. The latter release is one of the most soulfully melodic long players you’re likely to ever hear. The band is always experimenting with every possible aspect of recording, making use of didgeridoos and what sounds like beat boxing on MPP. Beat boxing? I’ll listen to anyone who still beat boxes in 2009. I’d recommend that you do the same.

The Brilliance of Lil' Wayne?

Lil’ Wayne has become one of the most polarizing artists in the independent music community. Since becoming a hipster darling through Pitchfork’s issuance of glowing reviews for two of the decade’s best mixtapes, Dedication 2 and Da Drought 3, it’s been cool to like him but maybe even more chic to hate him. What makes him different from clowns like 50 Cent and fellow-Cash Money pioneer Juvenile? He made a name for himself with a crew that grounded its business model on the exploitation of conspicuous consumption and boasts like, “I like to fuck her in the ass while he beat up the pussy.” But Weezy has come a long, long way since his exploits as mentee of Cash Money Records founder Baby. It seems that Wayne really found his voice when he embraced his eccentricity and began to operate on a different plane from anyone else on this planet. He’s that rare artist who can relate with comparable degrees of success to casual listeners and self-proclaimed aficionados, and for fans of popular hip-hop as well as those conversant with underground rap music. With his mixtapes, Wayne managed to strike this balance in a way that allowed him to focus his lyrical strengths while building a loyal following amongst cynics who could see that his effort and passion were substantial and not necessarily tied to promises of fortune and fame. He wouldn’t profit from the marathon mixtapes, even though each was clearly the result of tireless writing and included some of his best rhymes dropped over recycled beats. He didn’t need to record these to get his name out, and he surely could have used these lyrics with a set of fresh beats in order to push several more installments of the mainstream Tha Carter series. These tapes were loose and the raps were brilliantly insane. No ordinary rapper concocts lines like, “And when I was five my favorite movie was the Gremlins / Ain’t got shit to do with this but I just though that I should mention,” and “Don’t drink Cristal no more / Just pour it on white bitches’ heads.” Incredible. Weezy’s stream-of-consciousness rhymes and sickly relaxed flow communicate the thoughts of a madman, though whether Wayne is as crazy as he appears or whether this is all an act is always uncertain. He’s like a commercially acceptable version of Kool Keith or MF Doom, though certainly more consistent than the fading former. What’s more, his non-commercial efforts are generally much more exciting and creative than his proper releases. Da Drought 3 is arguably one of the ten best hip-hop releases of the decade, while Tha Carter III was mostly a hit-or-miss affair where Weezy alternated devastating flows over Kanye West production with inexplicable guest spots from Babyface and Robin Thicke. Even so, Wayne’s mega-selling 2008 LP showcased some of the year’s finest moments in the genre, with “A Milli” and “Got Money” conquering hearts by blending the rapper’s quirks with club-worthy braggadocio. The most prolific artist we’ve seen in a long while isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and love him or hate him, you have to appreciate that he’s operating on a different level from the rest of us mortals.

The Ceaseless Interplay Between Context and Art

Music is often defined as much by context as by the music itself. Consider the following: a widely known and active white supremacist records an album that is technically brilliant and timelessly poetic. The songs give no indication of the artist’s beliefs. Would you still be comfortable listening to and enjoying the music? Some would, I’m sure, but many others would not. The songwriter’s story is joined to the music and is inextricable from what the listener experiences. A true and loosely analogous scenario involves Charles Manson’s recordings (loosely so because I doubt that his music is brilliant, though I proudly admit to never having heard it). Many don’t realize or recall that one of America’s most infamous serial murderers was once an aspiring musician linked to Dennis Wilson. I once even saw a Charles Manson record listed amongst someone’s all-time favorites. I would guess that most people would be morally repulsed by the music of a killer; on the other hand, fans of the record are doubtlessly drawn by the prospect of violence and perversion spilling out of every word, chord, and pause. Why is Manson the way he is? Might the reason be buried in his music awaiting a careful and empathetic ear?

The story of the creator is important, but so is the context of creation and propagation. Fans of independent and obscuro music are often accused of only appreciating art for the sake of its obscurity, unable to take a more objective approach to what they like and don’t like (which is, of course, an inherently subjective process). I’ve lost count of the times when, after disclosing my distaste for Coldplay or some other radio darling, someone has followed with, “Why, because they’re too commercial?” Well yes, that’s partly it, but that isn’t the only reason I prefer not to listen to Coldplay, Fall-Out Boy, or whatever other band that newly occupies the airwaves and mall shelves. For many, the commodification of music is a growing concern climaxing when Metallica sought to have thousands upon thousands of its fans punished for downloading their music and each time Fergie sets foot in a recording studio. The problem is not that musicians want to earn money, which is a rightful reward for having created something that is desired and consumed. This is a fundamental principle of a market economy and artists justly want to capitalize on the transfer of their music. The problem is that the current commercial environment places a premium on sales rather than art, reducing the industry to the pithy truism of quantity over quality. Music is thus seen—by both artists and labels—as a commodity like any other, to be packaged and moved in an effort to gain the greatest possible returns. When some people listen to some brands of music, this commodification is obvious and the music becomes immediately associated with what many see as a wrong of an exploitative business. Context matters, and it matters no less where commercialism is concerned.

Physical beauty is another important contextual marker that attaches itself to music and alters perceptions of what we hear. Think of the Pussycat Dolls: are these really artists in any real sense? Would people listen to their songs if they weren’t so sexually suggestive, transmitted by sexy women in sexy dress? Remember that Milli Vanilli were selected to front the songs of less marketable singers, and in this summer’s Olympics, Chinese officials decided to have someone they saw as more attractive lip sync the performance of another little girl. Image is important (if not everything), and it helps form the context within which the audience hears the song. The guys from KISS understood this, and that’s probably why they chose to cover their monstrous faces with kitschy make-up.

In the independent and lo-fi communities, some of the most significant contextual markers are defined by who did what, when, and how. Artists that have been the vanguards of a movement or genre are generally well respected by these communities almost apart from what the music actually sounds like. Of course, since these artists help to define movements and genres by anticipating trends and experimenting with existing sounds, they often act as default prototypes against which future creations can be judged. The point is that the context of the music’s production is extremely meaningful. While the Velvet Underground are a great band by nearly any measure, their music is all the more extraordinary given their period of activity. You hear a freshness and revolution in the music that cannot be faked and is as rare as the shifting of musical epochs. On the popular front, Nirvana’s release of Nevermind was a comparable turning point. For my generation, the naked baby of the album cover and the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” signaled a giant leap forward from the hair metal and leftover 80s acts still making the rounds on radio and MTV. Despite being less revolutionary to the independent underground, Nirvana became the face of the alternative movement for the masses, and the music’s place in history is reflective of that. (Kurt Cobain’s larger than life persona and suicide further added to the band’s cache. Again, context.) I even recall seeing the “Teen Spirit” video dominate some short-lived Nickelodeon countdown show.

So context matters. It informs what we hear and how we hear it, and it should be clear that no art is ever consumed apart from circumstances that many argue should be ignored or condemned as inconsequential. Perhaps most importantly, the circumstances contribute something meaningful to the consumer and should be welcomed and understood rather than shunned and disconnected.