Animal Collective Has a New Album

Animal Collective is an avant-garde pop act that blends some of the best elements of Radiohead, Air, and Sigur Ros into a breakbeat-laden journey of psychedelia. Their ninth album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, is out on Jan. 20 and is currently available digitally. The highly anticipated release is getting mixed reviews. According to Craveonline.com, "This album is only as good as the drugs you're on while listening to it," while Popmatters.com calls it music for "life in its infinite variety and endless delight."

Before the album came out, the buzz was it would be one of the best albums of 2009 with some reviewers even comparing the album to the cult classic, Pet Sounds, by the Beach Boys. In Britain, the album is currently the third best-selling album in the country. For anyone who orders the album direct form the label, they will get a treat: an 8 song mixed CD of other artists.

The album is pushing Animal Collective toward the mainstream, blending all of the best elements of their sound into an accessible release. All of that is added to by the serendipitous circumstances of the creation of the album. The band chose a studio based on pictures, and an engineer they had never met based on his other recordings. Band member Brian Weitz told the National Post, "There were so many things that could have turned into disasters and nothing ever did. Everything sounded really good and we were having so much fun. So as we were making the record, it felt like this was a special one that stood out from the other ones."

Over the nine years the group has been together, they have developed a rabid following. Their sonic experimentation has often pushed the envelope, dividing people into camps of those that love them, and those that feel their albums are experiments in noodling. The four-piece band is also known for the variety of its music with each of its albums being distinct from each other. They first started garnering mainstream appeal in 2004 with Sung Tongs and blasted through in 2007.