Quiet Color

by Kevin Diamond and Neil Roberts

KD: Oh, the glory of being a pretentious brooklynite with a record player. Walking into SoundFix at noon today, with a coffee and breakfast buritto sitting hot in my hands, and walking straight for the record rack, I never felt more obvious. Not even pretending to browse, I grabbed a copy of Animal Collective’s new album, and headed straight for the cash register. Had to get home before my breakfast gets cold. Have to get out of the record store before I see some other album and buy it on a whim. I have a singular purpose today: I will accomplish my goals. If only I was this focused about everything else in my life.

I picked up my phone and called up some reserves. To attack an album of this magnitude, I asked for help from good friend and QC contributor Neil Roberts. He met me at my apartment and we spun the record.

Artist: Animal Collective Song: My Girls

…

Putting the 180 gram Merriweather Post Pavillian vinyl onto my record player and dropping the needle, the waves of looped feedback that start off the album seemed to wash over me like a cleansing dunk in a blessed pond. The peace and serenity of those initial waves soon gave way to a thudding bass line that shook my core and reverberated through the apartment complex I live in. Thank god it’s one in the afternoon and everyone around me is at their day jobs. Opener In The Flowers is a hymn to a loved one, and it begins an exploration of themes that continue through all 4 sides; themes of maturity and responsibility, the nostalgia of youth contrasted with a fear of growing old. These are timeless themes, and yet they seem fresh in Animal Collective’s hands.

NR: Meriweather Post Pavilion is what I hoped for. I was optimistic for this album, but I wasn’t expecting this. I’ve always known that animal collective was extraordinary. But now, I’m sure I will live a better life because of how extraordinary they actually are. It’s a real pleasure to be alive at a time where albums like this can be made. I can’t wait to give this to my kids someday, and tell them that this is the album that made me want to have you. I haven’t turned it off for a week straight yet every single time I listen to it I can find more layered perfection that I’ve never heard before, or ever before. I want to live my life to this album, go about my days listening to it, making it a part of me, the way only an album this good can. I want these songs to be remembered as the pop songs of my generation. This is a tingling feeling in my loins that I got from listening to albums like, You forgot it in people, Funeral, In Rainbows… albums that stick to your bones from the first listen. Albums that tear you soul apart just so you can put it back together, but better… cause it gave you a glimpse of paradise. This album the closest thing I can get to having a religious experience everyday. Truly a glimpse into the future of music as well as my own future.

KD: What is it that elicits such a rabid reaction to this album? These themes and ideas that are explored lyrically are only half of the picture. The instrumentation and song structures utilized are unique yet ageless, traditional and avant garde at the same time: Brian Wilson harmonies paired with African rhythms, dance house beats rubbing up against folk song melodies. This is an album full of repetition, yet it never seems to tread the same ground twice. Melody is built in the cracks instead of the foundation, and rhythm springs from the cadences of the human experience.

NR: I could spend the next 5 years trying to discover how they actually made this album. Oh, the perfected wave formations of all the carefully chosen synths. Fluttering, flowing, arpeggiating simplistic repetition, that weave together with the vocals to create a truly transcendent experience. The vocal recordings will be printed in the history books. Harmonies that chase each other, and play with each other, like little kids free of rules, or restrictions. It’s about time someone made a great vocal album. People want to hear other people sing. It’s a fact. Look it up. Drums being used as instruments! Actual musical instruments capable of so much more than a 2 and 4 back beat. Drums that power an orchestrated river of tribality and sensuality upon which this album floats. Not traditional by any means, this is modern drumming. The album has almost no snare, just a luscious array of toms, shakers, claps, rim and stick clicks.

KD: And these sounds and noises, melodies and songs drip off the vinyl like butter off the side of a griddle, salty and sweet. If there was ever an album that showed the limitations of the digital media, it could very well be this one. These songs strut and sway, float and sink in the air in front of your speakers. Any one of them could be a favorite, but My Girls stands out as a timeless single. It’s an ode to fatherhood, and the poppiest song on the record, with a melancholy I haven’t felt since the first time I heard Naive Melody by the Talking Heads. Summertime Clothes bounces, and Guys Eyes’ weaves. No More Runnin starts like a dirge, a requiem for one’s transient, bohemian, nomadic nature. The end of the freedom of youth. But no sooner do these emotions wash over you then Brother Sport begins, a joyful sound, with a use of tension and release that is unparalleled. The album as a whole frolicks in a field, till dusk, then crawls on the roof of your garage and looks for falling stars.

NR: Yet another guidepost on my musical journey has been planted. It’s like all of a sudden a band I love writes an album that is like a John Williams soundtrack to my life. This album makes me want dance and chant and paint and write and make music that’s never been made before and fall in love and fall out of love and have kids and have sex and have kids because of the sex had to the album and then name the kid Meriwether… and then spend the rest of my life trying to make an album half as good as this.