Animal Collective

Four friends from Baltimore County who turned home recordings into experimental pop, and reached the American top 15 in 2009 with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Origin: Baltimore County, Maryland, United States
Years active: 2000-present
Genres: experimental pop, psychedelic pop, freak folk, neo-psychedelia
Labels: FatCat, Domino

Baltimore

Animal Collective grew out of childhood friendships in Baltimore County. Noah Lennox and Josh Dibb met in second grade at the Waldorf School of Baltimore. David Portner and Brian Weitz became friends at the Park School, where they started playing music at fifteen out of a shared love of Pavement and horror movies. The four swapped home recordings, then scattered to colleges in Boston and New York. In summer 1999 Portner asked Lennox to play drums on the record that became Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, released a year later as Avey Tare and Panda Bear. The pair played their first New York show together in late summer 2000, and wore masks and makeup for the first time. The group kept wearing disguises until an Australian tour in November 2006.

Danse Manatee (2001) and Campfire Songs followed. The latter is one take of five songs, recorded live on a screened-in porch in Monkton, Maryland. Here Comes the Indian (2003) was the first record with all four members, and the first issued under a catch-all name that spared them listing four stage names.

Sung Tongs to Strawberry Jam

Sung Tongs (2004) was made by Portner and Lennox alone, in rural Colorado with the engineer Rusty Santos, and came out on FatCat. Pitchfork's Dominique Leone called it romantic in its celebration of innocence. Feels arrived in October 2005, recorded in Seattle with Scott Colburn, its guitars tuned to loops made from a friend's out-of-tune piano. Mark Richardson of Pitchfork opened his review by saying Animal Collective "will not stay still."

Strawberry Jam (2007) was their first record for Domino and their first on the Billboard 200, where it peaked at 72. It was recorded in Tucson. Early in 2007 Dibb announced a break from touring, and the group played live as a trio until late 2009.

Merriweather Post Pavilion

With Dibb away, the other three wrote for samplers. They began playing a new batch of songs in May 2007 and toured with it through 2008. For the record they chose Ben H. Allen, picked for his low-end work with Gnarls Barkley. They tracked it in February 2008 at Sweet Tea in Oxford, Mississippi, with only Allen and an assistant present and no phones or computers. PA speakers sat in the control room to keep the feel of a live show. Mixing followed in Athens, Georgia. Merriweather Post Pavilion came out in January 2009 on Domino, named for the Maryland amphitheater where Portner and Weitz had gone to concerts. The band did not play there until 2011.

The singles were My Girls, Summertime Clothes and Brother Sport. The album peaked at 13 on the Billboard 200 and 2 on the US independent chart. Pitchfork named it Album of the Year, and Dave Simpson of the Guardian called it "a joyful, transcendent record." On 7 May 2009 the band played Summertime Clothes on the Late Show with David Letterman.

After

The Fall Be Kind EP followed in December 2009, with the first legal Grateful Dead sample. The film ODDSAC, made with Danny Perez, premiered at Sundance in January 2010. Dibb rejoined in November 2010, and Centipede Hz (2012) was written in Baltimore and recorded with Allen again. Painting With (2016) was made by the trio in the Hollywood room where Brian Wilson cut Pet Sounds. Tangerine Reef (2018), Time Skiffs (2022) and Isn't It Now? (2023) came after.

AllMusic's Fred Thomas suggested that the group "defined the face of independent experimental rock during the 2000s and 2010s." The Ringer named Alt-J, Deerhunter and Tame Impala among the bands that took up the Merriweather formula, and Allen said the last ten years had been swamped in reverb. Larry Fitzmaurice of Pitchfork called the album the alpha and omega of 2000s indie.

Members

Avey Tare (David Portner) vocals, guitar, synthesizer, keys, bass guitar, percussion
Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) vocals, drums, percussion, samples, synthesizer, electronics
Geologist (Brian Weitz) electronics, samples, synthesizer, piano, percussion
Deakin (Josh Dibb) guitar, synthesizer, vocals, keys, percussion, sampler

Records

Sung Tongs 2004 · FatCat
A two-man record of acoustic guitars and voices, and the album that Pitchfork put second in its 2004 list.
Feels 2005 · FatCat
Guitars tuned to loops of a friend's out-of-tune piano, and a violist who improvised on first hearing.
Strawberry Jam 2007 · Domino
The first Domino record and the first Billboard 200 entry, made in a desert and named after a packet of jam on a plane.
Merriweather Post Pavilion 2009 · Domino
The trio record: samplers, reverb, Panda Bear and Avey Tare in harmony, and a top 15 American chart place.
Centipede Hz 2012 · Domino
Deakin returns, the four go home to Baltimore, and radio static runs through the songs.

Songs

My Girls Merriweather Post Pavilion · 2009
Panda Bear on wanting a safe house for his family, over a space probe and a house-music pulse.
Summertime Clothes Merriweather Post Pavilion · 2009
A simple melody that came suddenly in rehearsal, and the song on which band and producer disagreed about vocal levels.
Brother Sport Merriweather Post Pavilion · 2009
The closer: chants, rave sirens and drums, and the leak that came weeks early.
In the Flowers Merriweather Post Pavilion · 2009
The opener: a long, ethereal introduction, then an earthquake of drums.
Daily Routine Merriweather Post Pavilion · 2009
It starts with a water drop, and ends in a drone made by chaining samplers together.
Fireworks Strawberry Jam · 2007
The Strawberry Jam single about the pleasure, and difficulty, of simple things.

Panda Bear, Black Dice, Vashti Bunyan, The Beach Boys

Where to go next

Official

Animal Collective on Bandcamp The band's own page for its music.

Reference

Animal Collective A history of the band.

Writing and criticism

Pitchfork on Merriweather Post Pavilion The January 2009 review by Mark Richardson.
Pitchfork: Radical Enough to Redefine Indie Music A tenth-anniversary essay on the album and its moment.
The Guardian on Merriweather Post Pavilion Dave Simpson's review from January 2009.
The A.V. Club on Merriweather Post Pavilion Andy Battaglia's review.
Rolling Stone on Merriweather Post Pavilion Will Hermes's short review.
Stereogum: the 10 best Animal Collective songs A ranked guide from 2012.
The Fader: Freak Scene, Fireworks A short essay on the Strawberry Jam single.

Interviews

An Oral History of Animal Collective All four members, the producer and the label people on the years up to Merriweather.
Recording electronica live in the studio Ben Allen and the band on the sessions at Sweet Tea.
The Ringer: Heavy Reverb Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Geologist look back on the album ten years on.

Live performance archives

Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 20 January 2009 A recording of a show in January 2009.
Coronet Theatre, 11 July 2007 An audience tape from 2007.

Fan sites and communities

Collected Animals The long-running fan forum, with lyrics and tabs sections.

Sources

Animal Collective, Wikipedia
Merriweather Post Pavilion (album), Wikipedia
An Oral History of Animal Collective, Red Bull Music Academy (2018-11-04)
Recording electronica live in the studio, Sound On Sound (2009-05)
Merriweather Post Pavilion review, Pitchfork (2009-01-05)
Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion Was Radical Enough to Redefine Indie Music. Why Didn't It?, Pitchfork (2019-01-07)
Heavy Reverb: The Still-Resonant Psych-Pop Influence of Merriweather Post Pavilion, The Ringer (2019-01-04)