It should be good to share our favorite things
I’ll keep an open mind if you let me in
Don’t let your temper rise, don’t get a bitter face
Try not to judge me on my kind of taste
And don’t go changing clothes when they don’t like yours

This invitation and counsel comes from the closing verse of the song “Taste,” a squelching Beach Boys-meets-Main Street Electrical Light Parade stomp from Animal Collective’s latest opus, Merriweather Post Pavilion. If ever there was one album worth leaving your musical comfort zone for, an album worth spending some time getting acquainted with, allowing it to grow and reveal its many delights and rewards to you (even, and maybe especially, if you didn’t like it at first), this is the one.

Throughout their career as a band, Animal Collective has tapped into the joyful, scary sounds of childhood sonic exploration. By this I refer to the fun, meandering, genius songs that some four-year-olds make up on the spot, or the wild sounds you might hear an untrained five year old who has free reign at a piano pound out. In other words, these are the musical activities children feel free to do before they learn to do them the proper way, before they become self-conscious and embarrassed about such behavior, or before the keyboard cover is slammed down and they are dragged out of grandma’s living room to timeout. The members of Animal Collective either never moved past this stage or they found some magical way to revert to it. They are “playing” music, and as play it is imaginative, primal, experimental, fun, obnoxious, and, perhaps above all, mysterious.

I emphasize the mystery of their music because It is often nearly impossible to figure out what instruments, sounds, or playing methods you are hearing at any particular moment in an Animal Collective song.  In past efforts their lyrics were sometimes difficult to correctly decipher and included words placed together as much or more for their sound as for their meaning.  Again, this mystery and abstraction points back to that childlike propensity to “play,” their ignorance of many of the conventions of musicianship or their belligerent refusal to adhere to them. Over the course of their career they have developed their own idiosyncratic methods of creating music using their instruments, their computers and their voices, and this has made for several albums worthy of the listening ear of an open-minded music fan. However, with the songs on Merriweather they have clearly become masters of their self-made musical methods; this is their most accomplished and accessible album to date, in both songwriting and arrangement. Each song is fully formed, inhabiting its own lush and unique world.

Their instrumental mystery/mastery is in full play from the outset of the album with the song “In the Flowers.” Various abstract noises soon resolve themselves into a waltz rhythm featuring a triplet figure played on an instrument that, with each morphing note, sounds like it could be something different: Is it a harp? a harpsichord? a guitar? a treated piano? a synthesizer? After the second verse the song explodes into a beautiful cacophony of abstract sounds that give the effect of a full-on symphony orchestra: strings, brass, woodwinds, the whole package. I say “give the effect” because this “orchestration” is likewise of indeterminate instrumental origins. This wonderful noise blasts out over a thick electro-timpani beat and orchestral percussion. It simultaneously evokes a Tchaikovsky ballet movement and contemporary electronic dance music. Such musical references to dance make the lyrics and music entirely symbiotic, as the singer imagines dancing with the one he loves, from whom he is currently far removed.

Unabashed playfulness and lyrical mastery also abound in “Summertime Clothes,” which is at once a hugely weird summer jam, a perfectly written pop song, and a sort of “Good Vibrations” or “Singin’ in the Rain” for 2009. Sizzling, gurgling soda pop sounds and ambient street noise accompany euphoric singing that describes a hot summer nighttime walk through city streets:

It doesn’t really matter, I’ll go where you feel
Hunt for the breeze, get a midnight meal
I point in the windows, you point out the parks
Rip off your sleeves and I’ll ditch my socks
We’ll dance to the songs from the cars as they pass
Weave through the cardboard, smell that trash
Walking around in our summertime clothes,
Nowhere to go while our bodies glow
And we’ll greet the dawn in its morning blues
With purple yawn, you’ll be sleeping soon
And I want to walk around with you
And I want to walk around with you

To me, one of the most winning aspects of <em>Merriweather</em> is the fact that so much sonic playfulness and weirdness is coupled with lyrics firmly grounded in domestic life. These are not songs about random sex, drugs, violence, and rock n’ roll excess, nor are they political rants, trite love songs, or absurd fantasies, but rather songs about wanting to provide a decent home for your family (“My Girls”), songs about missing your spouse when traveling (“In the Flowers,” “Guys Eyes,”), songs about waking up early and getting your child ready for the day (‘Daily Routine”), and songs giving advice to a little brother (“Brother Sport”).  In these songs the mundane becomes magical and the banal goes wild.

A fine example is “Daily Routine,” which, with its cut-up organ flourishes, vocal harmonies, and fat hip-hop beats sounds like a Timbaland remix of Yes’ “Close to the Edge.” However, in contrast to the mysticism of Yes songs and the vulgarity of much of hip-hop, “Daily Routine” lyrically depicts the pedestrian events the title implies, “Make sure my kid’s got a jacket / And coat and shoes and hat. / Strap a stroller to my back / Bouncing along every crack.” The true genius comes in the second part of the song, all slow, echoing, reverb-drenched drone over which the lines “Just a sec more…in my bed / Hope my machine’s working right” are sung repeatedly, musically re-creating the feeling of wanting to hit the snooze button in the morning.

Despite the many details and colors of the music, it is the simple exuberance of many of these songs that keeps me listening to them over and over again. I love the counter-intuitive brilliance of closing the album with a song as enthusiastic, infectious, and stadium-ready as “Brother Sport.” I smile and marvel at the audacity of filling the hand-clapping pop anthem chorus of “My Girls” with the so not rock-n-roll lines, “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things / (like a social stance) / I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls / (Woooooooh!)” Taken together, the songs of this album set forth a refreshing view of life in which the hottest party is at home with the family, and nothing is more exciting than spending time with the ones you love. In my opinion it’s a mature perspective to express with such wild and childish sounds. Due to this album’s sonic inventiveness, its musical hyperactivity, its total lack of cynicism and negativity, and it’s all-around positive energy and joyousness, I can’t really imagine an album coming out any time this year that I will like more than this one. Ultimately this is why I feel this is the one album among so many that is worth the time of the not-usually-patient listener: the more you listen to it, the more it may make you happy.

TV on the Radio showed up on the scene a few years ago with the startling soul/punk/industrial/doo wop Young Liars EP. Their second full length, the absurdly titled Return to Cookie Mountain, was a dense grower with multi-layered soundscapes; it eventually won out as my favorite album of 2006. With Dear Science, TVOTR have synthesized and put into practice all the knowledge gained from their prior experimentation. They have de-cluttered their mix, trading in some of the noise for an array of clean, polyphonic grooves and some more overt pop moves, even adding some great string arrangements to several songs. What results is a strong album in an evermore eclectic and satisfying fusion of styles that hardly anyone else dares to throw together: R&B, post-punk, hip-hop, indie, electronic, jazz, afro-funk, prog/art rock, and probably a load of other things I haven’t picked up on. They’ve spent the past few years sounding like absolutely no one else in rock, possibly because they sound like scattered fragments of everyone else, deconstructing everything from Radiohead to Usher to the Pixies. On this album they’re putting it all back together.

“Halfway Home,” the high energy album-opener, is also the track most in keeping with the expected TVOTR sound, if slightly more upbeat than usual. Syncopated drumming and heavily effected, chugging guitars create a drone background for some Beach Boys-styled “B-B-Ba-Ba-Boms,” over which lead vocalist Tunde Adebimpe croons with a voice that is not entirely unlike that of Nat King Cole.

Adebimpe is not the only vocal force, however, the band having been blessed with not one but two gifted vocalists and lyricists. Kyp Malone contrasts Adebimpe’s smoothness with a slightly more idiosyncratic, soulful vocal style. Check out his voice on “Golden Age,” the album’s celebratory “lead single” which sounds like it could have been unearthed from Michael Jackson’s long-lost collaboration with David Bowie and Brian Eno. The classic groove is clearly meant to get everyone on the dance floor, but the lyrics here have as much in common with the language of hymnody and the biblical psalms as they do with “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,”

Move your body
You’ve got all you need
And your arms in the air stir a sea of stars
And, oh, here it comes and it’s not so far
All light beings
Come on now make haste
Clap your hands
If you feel you’re in the right place
Thunder all surrounding
Feel it quake with the joy resounding
Palm to the palm you can feel it pounding
Never give it up you can feel it mounting
Oh it’s gonna drop gonna fill your cup
Oh it’s gonna drop gonna fill your cup
The age of miracles
The age of sound
Well there’s a golden age coming round, coming round, coming round

This simultaneous subversion and fusion of mainstream pop musical styles with spiritual (or in other cases political, poetic, and scientific) language to create curious and stunning lyrics recurs on many tracks. Production-wise, “Stork & Owl” sounds almost like something Timbaland could have brought to Justin Timberlake, but instead of the stereotypical lover man lyrics one expects from such a track, a close listening reveals more of a meditation on death and the challenges and chances of life, with lyrics like,

Death’s a door that love walks through
In and out, in and out
Back and forth, back and forth

Turn from the fear of the storms that might be
Oh, let it free, that caged on fire thing
Oh, hold its hands, it’ll feel like lightening
Oh, in your arms, safe from the storms.

A couple more favorite tracks I would be remiss not to comment on specifically:

• the absolutely vicious afro-funk groove of “Red Dress,” with its equally vicious and self-eviscerating lyrics which once again mix the biblical, the popular, the political, and the sociological.
• the souled-up In Rainbows-ish tracks “Love Dog” and “Shout Me Out,” which follow directly on its heels,

and

• album closer “Lover’s Day,” an absolutely ecstatic and occasionally explicit love song set to a fife-and-drum New Orleans march, complete with a multitude of both live and sampled woodwinds and horns.

Each song on the album is rock solid, fully formed and fully inhabiting its own sonic world. Quite a feat for an album of such diverse sounds. The heterogeneous sounds have made it easy for me to get caught up in repeated listens, as it’s hard to get bored with all the variation. And yet, despite the differences, the tracks seem to beg to be listened to one after another, as sequenced. They gain resonance by their juxtaposition. Taken as a whole, I feel the album partakes of a bit of that freshly canonical/instant classic feel most recently exemplified by In Rainbows.

Recommended for anyone who likes smart, adventurous funk/soul/rock music, and anyone who’s ever wanted to somehow listen to Kanye West and U2 at the exactly same time (am I the only one?)

By the way, you can listen to any or all of the tracks on this album for free just by clicking on the little triangle play buttons in the box at the top of this article. Streamed courtesy of the excellent lala.com music site.

I should also note that the only reason that this review is included in my best winter albums of 2008-2009 series is that I listened to it a whole lot this past winter.

I don’t know that I can honestly call the Fleet Foxes’ debut a wintertime collection of songs. A few unabashedly wintry songs are included (check out “White Winter Hymnal” and “Blue Ridge Mountains” below), but they also sing songs of summer, songs of fall, and, most of all, songs of spring:

What a life I lead in the summer
What a life I lead in the spring
What a life I lead in the winded breeze
What a life I lead in the spring

the foxes sing in a cappella harmony as the needle hits the groove on side one of the Sun Giant EP. So how do I get away with calling this a featured winter album? It is exactly this full-on seasonal frenzy that made this music so appealing on those days when our house was entombed in snow. It gave me hope in the eventual arrival of other seasons. The rustic, pastoral details of the lyrics reminded me that the natural world brings life and color, not just an overbearing white coldness. And also maybe it is more simple: despite all the hype, I really just became acquainted with this pleasant folk phenomenon at the turn of the year. Since then, many of these songs have become the definitive soundtrack to my winter. My wife loves this music too, so many times we listen to it together. And as for the winter influence, it’s hard to deny the complete appeal of lines like, “Come down from the mountain, you have been gone too long / Spring is upon us, follow my only song,” in the middle of a cold February in the Wasatch Mountains.

I mentioned hype. This album has gotten a lot of it, from the time of its release last spring through to topping a lot of end-of-year lists. I ashamedly admit that I ignored this music partly because of that hype for quite awhile (although since then I have clearly humbled myself), and I’m not exactly sure what I will write at this point that hasn’t been written a hundred times already. I could mention that this music sounds natural and organic in every way. I could speak of fine folk-inspired songwriting and impeccably arranged vocal harmonies. I could describe their sound as the King Singers collaborating with the Shins. I don’t know for sure if these things have been said or not, because I’ve been trying to avoid the reviews so I can write this without inadvertently plagiarizing anyone. I’ll just end with this recommendation: if you like the song “I’ve Seen All Good People” by Yes, you’re probably going to love Fleet Foxes. If you like Crosby, Stills & Nash, John Denver, Neil Young, Simon & Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, Peter, Paul & Mary, the Byrds, or Joni Mitchell, you’re probably going to love Fleet Foxes. If you like Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Bobby McFerrin, or My Morning Jacket, you’re probably going to love Fleet Foxes. If you like music, you’re probably going to love Fleet Foxes.

[By the way, this is another album that sounds absolutely incredible on vinyl. I know I said that about Microcastle, too, but I promise I'm not going to say that about every album I ever talk about. The vinyl edition includes the superb Sun Giant EP as a separate record in a gatefold LP, which otherwise you would have to buy or download separately. You will want to get your hands on that EP because its songs, a couple of which are sampled above, are as good as or better than those on the full length.]

Microcastle is the perfect album for a snowy winter afternoon in which you find yourself at home alone in the mountains.  It drifts, it floats, it accumulates.  It exudes a fuzzy analog warmth and an expansive ambience that blankets the whole house (our house is cozy).  Since the time that I purchased it early last November, it’s been by far my most played vinyl record, primarily because it just sounds so thick and warm and good in that format.  (Don’t let that dissuade you from trying CDs or MP3s, because the analog warmth is not it’s only strength.)

The dichotomy of cool and warm sounds are what make this album so compatible with winter listening; it’s like watching that snowstorm out of the window of a fire-warmed house, while the wind is howling through the top of the door and the walls are creaking. Much of the frigidity is in the lyrics. For example, the first lines sung on the record are “Cover me, cover me / Comfort me, comfort me,” and on the track “Never Stops” (press the play button at the top of the article to listen to it if you haven’t already), you’ll learn that it’s none other than winter that never stops.

This is a tight collection of songs with just enough sonic variance around the edges to keep things interesting.  The style? It’s basically 60s guitar pop/garage rock with the occasional 50s-styled rock n’ roll ballad.  Think of the Byrds, think of The Zombies (“Time of the Season”), and also think of early R.E.M., Deerhunter’s fellow Georgians who also revamped this 60s style in the 80s). It’s just not that straightforward, though; the songs are stormy and occasionally obscured by a tasteful amount of ambient, shoegazer, drone, and other post-punk/indie noise tricks blowing around in the background.  Think most particularly of My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth.

Some highlights:

• The album begins with an instrumental track called “Cover Me Slowly,” a Pink Floyd meets My Bloody Valentine widescreen slowburner which leads directly into the subtle and jangley “Agorophobia,” with the aforementioned appropriate opening lines:
  

• “Nothing Ever Happened,” which is just an all-around great, propulsive rock song that brings all the different sounds of the album together:
  

• “Neither of Us, Certainly,” because it is sonically the most snowfallingest song on the album:
  

• “Twilight at Carbon Lake,” the closing 6/8 ballad that starts out sounding like something Elvis might have crooned over at Sun Records, but expands and erupts into a beautiful caucaphonous climax:
  

A final note, to more fully secure this record’s impeccable winter credibility:  On the band’s official blog (more bands should have blogs; Deerhunter’s is great), lead singer Bradford Cox wrote a post lamenting the inadvertent leaking of this album months before the intended late October release date. (I just noticed they have now removed this post from their blog, so I’m now linking to an article that quotes the post.) One of Cox’s stated sadnesses over the leak was not that the band had lost a lot of potential sales from pirating, nor so much that the leak had undermined their publicity buildup scheme for the album, but rather that he had very much envisioned this music as a “fall/winter” record, designed to be listened to initially at that time of year, rather than the summer. I love that they think about this stuff as much or more than I do, and I love that they very much succeeded in creating a wintry record.

[This album also comes with a bonus CD entitled Weird Era Cont (even with the vinyl copy this second disc is a CD).  It is like standing out in that snowstorm looking longingly in through the window of that glowing, warm house.  Here the production is a little rougher and songcraft is sometimes secondary to sonic experimentation.  It has some real gems and greatly adds to appeal of the overall package.]