Psychedelectronica

I've always had an arm's length sort of relationship with Animal Collective.

It has never been that I don't like the music they make or that I don't like the idea of them as a band - it was only some sense that I liked it better in theory than in practice - that I would never listen to a whole album of it, even if I could always be happy when someone else had it playing at a party. That sort of thing.

I guess I would say that I've had trouble "getting" Animal Collective.

The songs always seemed about four minutes too long and had more to do with shape than with progression or melody. Sometimes I felt looped out, if you know what I mean.

But I bought the Panda Bear solo record, Person Pitch, and while I almost never listen to it all the way through in one sitting, I love it. It is like a Brian Wilson orgasm. And that is a good kind of orgasm to have.

So after Merriweather Post Pavilion started to get all kinds of rave reviews, and after Tim came by to proselytize to me about Animal Collective for the hundredth time, I resolved to give it a shot.

And it's really good. I haven't quite gathered the enthusiasm for it that some have (I'm not ready, in January, to declare it the greatest album of 2009), but it is certainly the best I've heard from Animal Collective. Anyway, it is the most accessible I've heard them be and, with a band like this, that is really the same thing. I have a feeling it will grow on me the more I play it.

The usual elements are all in place: a dance record buried under multitracked harmonies and psychedelic flourishes, an indie record swimming in electronica touches and anthemic swells of sound. It isn't a record you can slide right into like a warm bath - this one, like all the Animal Collective output, will take some effort - but there are jewels here if you can mine them.

For me anyway, the effort has finally been rewarded.

And yes, the album art does that for me too. It's creepy and a surprisingly good approximation of the music inside (underneath? behind?).