The Top 30 Albums of 2009: # 7

Animal Collective
Merriweather Post Pavilion

ha ha old people.

ha ha hipsters.

ha ha the internet.

ha ha mean people.

Conveniently located in the Baltimore/Washington corridor off Route 29 in Columbia, Maryland, Merriweather is nestled within the 40 preserved acres known as Symphony Woods. The natural, outdoor concert setting is one that simply can't be matched.

Outside? Who goes outside anymore? The woods? Who goes to the woods anymore? Tap water? Who drinks tap water anymore? Hand jobs? Who gets hand jobs anymore? CBS? Who watches CBS anymore?

---

Here's a picture of a cat.

----

I drove home crying after I lost my virginity. A couple of weeks later, she was scooping up this guy's semen off the seat of his truck and shoving it inside her, because she figured he wouldn't break it off with her if she got pregnant. Years later, I saw her sitting in the hatchback trunk of a Ford Escort in a Wal-Mart parking lot. We made eye contact as I drove away.

I was wearing 300 dollar jeans that a homosexual man gave to me. (He bought lots of clothes that he planned on wearing when he had lost enough weight to fit into them. Every few months, he would give the unworn clothes away and buy new ones.)

I remember thinking that was sort of fair, me in new clothes, her looking sad in a trunk, and then being surprised that I was still bitter.

That's when I knew that I could like Animal Collective a whole lot. Bunches, even.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Zeb]

I feel like we worked through some stuff here today.

[John Pontoon]

I just don't get why people like this album. Everyone does, too. I've listened to the goddamn thing like eight times, and it feels me with the overwhelming urge to not be listening to it. Sooooo boring. Do you win prizes when you join the "This album is teh best and logicalest continuation and yet different and but the same as they always made but better" conspiracy? Is the green-and-purple cover hypnotizing people or discombobulating them in the Van Gogh orange vs. blue way?

So many people think it's good that I begin to doubt myself, but I REEEAAAALLLLLLY don't want to listen to it again.

[Marty]

Earlier this year, when I told Tucker I was on the fence about this album, he slapped me in the face and said, "Get in the game."

[NoahB]

I kind of like to think of the two of you preparing for this by going out to a farm somewhere, climbing up on a fence overlooking a big old hog puddle, and then just slapping each other off the fence and down into the mud, over and over.

And then the least muddy albums are the best of the year!

Or would it be the most muddy?

[Student speed dating]

Lovely post and cool videos. I have bookmarked your site as I am feeling to have much more fun and interesting information from here.

[andre]

This album is teh best and logicalest continuation and yet different and but the same as they always made but better