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Valentine’s Day

Pop Novels episode six: ‘Valentine’s Day’
Mon. Feb. 8, 2010

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The Arrogants–“Feels Like Falling In Love.” Optimistic and up-beat, “Feels Like Falling In Love” moves fast under its own light-as-air instrumentation, while the extremely cute-sounding Jana Heller sings even cuter-sounding things like, “Place your hand in mine/ Lose your sense of time,” “I feel my pulse begin to race/ As I look across your face,” and “Tonight you know what I dream of/ Tonight I feel like falling in love.”
Leona Lewis–“Fly Here Now.” The chorus! This might sound crazy but/ Just fly here right now/ Glide like an airplane and/ Just fly here right now! “Fly Here Now” is also incredibly powerful because it’s produced in such a way that makes it impossible for it to sound bad.
The Shangri-Las–“Give Him a Great Big Kiss”
The Beatles–“Tell Me What You See.” “Tell Me What You See” is incredible: it stands out as a terrific love song in the Beatles’ catalogue of terrific love songs. Everything about it––the measured frustration, the mild disbelief, the gentle repetition––is right.
The Soft Boys–“Kingdom of Love”
The Magnetic Fields–“The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing”
The Troggs–“With a Girl Like You.” “With a Girl Like You” is just about perfect. There are so many different levels of love squeezed into just two minutes. He wants to spend his life with a girl like her, but she doesn’t notice him, so he’ll just settle for a dance. If he can even get that. There are not really better songs.
Annie–“Heartbeat.” I’ve heard this song called the love song of the decade (2000s). Well…maybe. It is great, though. Annie’s ashamed about her feelings––she loves this guy even though she doesn’t know his name––and the throughout the course of song, she doesn’t really resolve anything––or learn his name––but you can tell she’s: the whole song sounds like it’s moving upwards, slowly lifting off the ground, and then flying.
David Guetta–“When Love Takes Over (Ft. Kelly Rowland).” So simple, so perfect, so shiny, so good. “When love takes over, yeah/ You know you can’t deny/ When love takes over, yeah/ ‘Cause something’s here tonight.” Any questions?
The Blow–“Parentheses.” Sooooooooooo cute. Just the goddamn image: “When you’re holding me/ We make a pair of parentheses.”
Sebastian Tellier –“Elle”
Peter Gabriel–“In Your Eyes.” The Ronettes may have the Essential Love Song, but there is no question that this is the Essential Mixtape Love Song. “Love, I get so lost sometimes.” C’mon!
The Magnetic Fields–“(Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy
The xx–“Islands”
The Beach Boys–“Never Learn Not to Love.” A little selfish maybe (“Give up your world/ Come and be with me”), but it’s definitely the thought that counts: “I know I could never learn not to love you.” The thought counts, yes, but so do the harmonies. It’s useless to write anymore about that, so I’ll just say that the last 14 seconds alone contain some of the prettiest harmonizing I’ve ever heard.
The Ronettes–“Be My Baby.” Perhaps the essential love song. From the very first now-famous drumbeats, you know just what you’re getting into. The dense, jangly Wall of Sound production gives the track a sense of subdued grandeur that seems almost at odds with Ronnie Spector’s unrelenting and desperate repetition of “be my baby.” Sadly, heartbreakingly, she keeps trying, and by the end of the song, it’s not hard to picture her in tears.
The dB’s–“I’m In Love.” This one’s cool. He’s in love, but he’s so unsure about it that you can’t help but just hope everything works out. “It could work out any way/ It could be bad/ It could be good/ It could be none of the above/ Yes I do understand/ No I don’t understand/ Why I’m in love/ I’m in love/ I’m in love.”
The Temptations–“The Way You Do the Things You Do.” Wonderful song. Makes everybody who hears it feel good, especially the girl you have in mind. Choice lines include: “I’m holding you so tight/ You know you could have been a handle,” “The way you swept me off my feet/ You know you could have been a broom,” “Baby you’re so smart/ You know you could have been a schoolbook,” and, of course, “You make my life so rich/ You know you should have been some money.”
Beat Happening–“Bewitched.” Underneath the pure lo-fi guitar and sinister-sounding non-sequiturs, this is just a song about a little crush. And no one does crushes as well as Beat Happening.
Lou Reed–“Perfect Day.” Amazing. It’s so simple. “It’s such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you.” But there’s so much more to it. Near the end, the song changes as Reed repeats and repeats his devastating bit of relationship advice: “You’re going to reap just what you sew.”
Olivia Newton-John–“I Honestly Love You.” Corny maybe, but it is honest. Lines as true, and, yes, honest, as, “I’m not trying to make you feel uncomfortable/ I’m not trying to make you anything at all/ But this feeling doesn’t come along everyday/ And you shouldn’t blow the chance/ When you’ve got the chance to say/ I love you/ I honestly love you” don’t come up in songs as ridiculed as this one is very often.
Justin Timberlake–“Until the End of Time.” The bubbly and so-obvious Timberlake production and sweet-nothings-as-lyrics render this one pretty much irresistible, probably.
The Magnetic Fields–“The Way You Say Good-Night”
Jens Lekman–“You Are the Light (By Which I Travel Into This and That).” Love this song. First, there’s the hilarious/cheesy horn intro. Then there’s the hilarious/romantic setup: Jens gets “busted” so he uses his one phone call to dedicate a song to his girl on the radio (later we learn he got arrested because he “painted a dirty word on your old man’s Mercedes Benz ‘cause you told me to do it”). Then, throughout the song, there’s that hilarious/wordy chorus (“You are the light by which I travel into this and that.” Yeah you are!). I don’t think things can get any more romantic than this.
Yo La Tengo–“Here To Fall”
The Kingdom–“Love Is My Nation”
Véronique Sanson–“Amoureuse”
The 6ths–“You You You You You”
Best Coast–“That Feeling of Love.” The problem here is that she can’t tell him how much she loves him because as soon as she does she’ll never see him again because he’s “just as weird as me/ And you don’t know how to deal/ With feelings that are strong like these.” Sucks, right?
The Velvet Underground–“I’m Sticking With You”
The Magnetic Fields–“The Book of Love.” When Magnetic Fields mastermind Stephin Merritt sings, “The book of love is long and boring and written very long ago/ It’s full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes/ And things we’re all too young to know,” I’m tricked into imaging that there actually is one enormous, dusty book––a book I’ll never see––from which everything having to do with love came. But then, brilliantly, it sounds like that was his plan all a long––he’s trying to trick the person he’s in love with into marrying him. He’s saying, We’ll never actually know anything more about any of this, so then, simply, “you-ou-ou-ou ought to give me wedding rings.”
The Magnetic Fields–“The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure”
The Magnetic Fields–”Promises of Eternity”
The Magnetic Fields–”When My Boy Walks Down the Street”
The Magnetic Fields–”Epitaph for My Heart”
The Magnetic Fields–”Asleep and Dreaming”
The Magnetic Fields–”I Think I Need a New Heart”
The Magnetic Fields–”Busby Berkeley Dreams”
Stevie Wonder–“I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever).” The first time he hits the chorus: turn it up! Mm-I belieeeeeveeeee when I fallll in lovee with youu it will be for-evver. And then don’t ever turn it off.



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Chilly scenes of winter

Pop Novels episode five: ‘Chilly scenes of winter’
Mon. Feb. 1, 2010

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Contra Girl

Pop Novels episode four: ‘Contra Girl’
Mon. Jan. 25, 2010

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Stacks, #5 (Because it’s really, really stacking up again)

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Time to make sense of the new stack of music sitting in my bedroom.
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•       •      •

Animal Collective, Fall Be Kind EP. Careful guys, nobody wants another nerdy jam band. Nobody. GOOD-

Smog, Dongs of Sevotion. Bill Callahan…….takes………his………….time here. And the result the result the result is so unlike anything else. OH GOD. Nine of the eleven songs are five minutes or more and most are almost seven. You don’t really notice though, but you kind of do. The record––and Callahan’s measured, timed, slow repetition––calms and amazes at the same time. OH GOD. And the songs. The songs make the absolute most of their length and mostly sparse instrumentation. Nothing goes on too long because everything goes on too long. OH GOD. Lyrically, too, the record is brilliant. Modern, real-life lines mix with bizarre, grand ones to make up an eerie semi-normal world. OH GOD. In “Strayed,” the way Callahan sings “I have taken you for a ride,” it sounds like he means “ride” as in, like, the entire relationship was a sham, that kind of ride, like a lie; but then, just as you think that, he makes it totally normal: “Left you waiting in the car.” Or does he? Immediately, he puts the whole gorgeous slowness up to a ledge and dangles it over with the profound and almost impossible addition of “While I played death games inside.” OH GOD. Elsewhere lines like “She washed her cut in the sink,” “Dress sexy at my funeral,” and “I can hold a woman down on a hardwood floor” work similarly, operating in the real but becoming almost instantly profound. The last song, “Permanent Smile,” too: OH GOD. GREAT

Discovery, LP. Realllly wrote this record off when it came out. LP? That Jackson 5 cover? Ra Ra Riot? Discovery? Heh. Now, though, I know I was kind of wrong. “Orange Shirt” is enough to make the record required listening. To prove this I am going to transcribe the lyrics below, with the most crucial bits highlighted:

I’m walking past your house
But
I’m never gonna stop there

Just to look at my clock and think how
You love talking cats
And every sound that I hear from you mouth is so deliberate
So maybe I can but maybe you will know
Never nice at all but we can work it out
Always sexy when you chew that straw
Especially when you
wear Lacoste

All this lust that you’re keeping
And me
I’ve got a crush
Can I sleep inside I know you’re nervous though
So
I promise to leave before your mother wakes up in the morning

We’re sleeping head to toe
And everything that I wanna know
Is on a local train outside of
Tokyo
Living in a tiny, overcrowded town

Still you won’t call me back
And
every text that I get from you is so so serious
But I’m
sitting at home sipping this miso
Ticking
raindrops upon my window pane
You’re texting too fast for me to reply
Never looking when you type T9


All this love that you’re keeping
And me
I’ve got a crush
Can I sleep inside I know you’re nervous though
So
I promise to leave before your mother wakes up in the morning

Sleep on the train to Tokyo
Google yourself when you get home
Sleep on the train to Tokyo
Google yourself when you get home


All this love that you’re keeping
And me
I’ve got a crush, and me I’ve got a crush
All this love, this love
All this love
All this love that you’re keeping
And me
I’ve got a crush
And me
I’ve got a crush

Got all that? SUCK+

El Perro Del Mar, Love Is Not Pop. Blonde? Has a sense of humor? Does Lou Reed covers? I think I’m in love. Oh and by the way, I did a little research and it turns out that love is, in fact, pop. GOOD

Silk Flowers, Silk Flowers. Last year, Pitchfork’s Joshua Love wrote that listening to Portishead’s “Machine Gun” “was one of the most purely satisfying physical experiences of 2008.” (And how!) This year, I thought that honor would go to one of Sleigh Bells’s tracks. However, I think Silk Flowers may actually get it. As far as “physical experiences” go, it doesn’t get much more “purely satisfying.” The record is a feeling more than it is a collection of songs. And not a feeling like melancholy or something, no, it’s a feeling more like nervousness and horror and worry. It’s terrifying, it’s relentless. Just try listening to Silk Flowers for the first time while driving fast through the dark and not getting scared. Remember to play it loudly and don’t turn it down no matter what. The first song is deceptively normal (though still nerve-racking with it’s deep deep deep vocals and smoggy lo-fi production and piercing drum machines), poppy even, in some circles. But then: track two, “Night Shades,” is just OUT OF CONTROL. It slices your ears off and then it totals your car. Afterwards, you’re gonna wanna park somewhere, drink some water, maybe take a nap, and definitely just try to relax. SUCK+

Cold Cave, Love Comes Close. Love might not tear us apart, but it comes close. GOOD

Leona Lewis, Echo. The production sparkles like new and each track here has a completely unique attitude yet they all fit together  to create and occupy this epic emotional space, it’s like this sort of sweetly perfumed haze that rises to the ceiling and hovers over everyone who is really listening. It feels good and it smells like women. GOOD

Buzzcocks, Singles Going Steady. Singles comps are great, and Singles Going Steady is no exception (it’s a great name, too). The Buzzcocks are punks, yes, but they are so much more. Why? Because of a crazy little thing called love. (Mostly. Also: they basically invented pauses.) Their appeal lies in their brilliant proper-punk-styled love songs. Titles like “Love You More,” “Promises,” “Ever Fallen In Love” don’t sound like “punk” songs but that’s only because they’re great. GOOD+

Bonnie “Prince” Billie, Lie Down in the Light. This little masterpiece breathes and creaks like an old (but not too old) cabin somewhere out in the woods (but not too far from the city). Despite Will Oldham’s characteristic gentlemanly sadness, Lie Down in the Light is a fairly happy record. On “So Everyone” he and some female vocals cheer about how much they love each other: “Show you want want me and do it so everyone sees me.” On “Keep Eye on Other’s Gain,” Oldham gorgeously, simply, heartbreakingly reminds you to “Keep your loved ones near/ And let them know just where you be/ ‘Cause others need you right nearby.” The hooks, too, do not stop: they grow and grow and then break and start all over again. “You Want that Picture” is a mass of growing, groaning choruses that seem to teeter with each additional line: “Well it’s true that I cried/ But then I went outside/ And I stood very still in the night/ And I looked at the sky/ And knew someday I’d die/And then everything would be all right/It’s all right/ And everything comes down to this/ That everything there ever was/ Or will be/ Is all there is.” GREAT

The Clientele, God Save the Clientele. This is great stuff. It’s orchestral and poppy and catchy and wistful and sad. The singer sounds a little bit like Dylan if he was British and whispered everything. The amount of control the Clientele has over its aesthetic is incredible. The songs practically smell like old leather and lovely sweaters. “The Queen of Seville”: “It’s going to be a lonely, lonely day.” “Bookshop Casanova”: “You got my name, pick up my number.” “Here Comes the Phantom”: “Happiness just comes and goes”. “Winter on Victoria Street”: “When I get home, I’ll get you alone.” “From Brighton to Santa Monica”: “Autumn’s coming in the air.” “These Days Nothing But Sunshine”: “I guess this sounds just like goodbye.” “Somebody Changed”: “Girls in the trees have the faces of angels.” “No Dreams Last Night”: “No dreams last night.” Mmm. GOOD+

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Excited, established

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So: this year was AMAZING and everything but, but, but, but, then there’s next year. Look at this list that Stereogum has just compiled. My friend just sent it to me. It is too much.

Next year––2010––is going to be out of hand. 2009 was amazing, it was perfect, it was, as they say, a very good year. However, it was, for the most part, made up of total newcomer-artists. 2010 deals in the established. The National, the Hold Steady, the Magnetic Fields, Beach House, Vampire Weekend, the Avalanches, Yeasayer, No Age, Spoon, Peter Gabriel, Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, Panda Bear, Los Compesinos!, etc. No second-guessing or ‘oooh should I get that’ here, no: it’s all going to be great and you know it. No reservations.

Brace yourselves. Get money and get funny again.

BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW
BUY NEW

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The best albums of 2009

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•         •         •

25. jj nº 2 by jj
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24. Dragonslayer by Sunset Rubdown
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23. The Eternal by Sonic Youth
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22. Eating Us by Black Moth Super Rainbow
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21. Face Control by Handsome Furs
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20. Post-Nothing by Japandroids
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19. Watch Me Fall by Jay Reatard
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18. Mo Beauty by Alec Ounsworth
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17. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart
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16. The Ecstatic by Mos Def
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15. The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga
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14. A Brief History of Love by the Big Pink
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13. Fever Ray by Fever Ray
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12. Under And Under by Blank Dogs
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11. Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear
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10. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. 2 by Raekwon
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09. Logos by Atlas Sound
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08. Popular Songs by Yo La Tengo
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07. Wavvves by Wavves
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06. Love Comes Close by Cold Cave
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05. Don’t Stop by Annie
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04. Album by Girls
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03. xx by the xx
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02. King of Jeans by Pissed Jeans
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01. Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective
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Drinking orange acid from styrofoam cups

Pop Novels episode two: ‘Drinking orange acid from styrofoam cups’
Wed. Dec. 9, 2009

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Best songs of 2009

_____________________

‘My Girls’–Animal Collective
‘Crystalised’–the xx
‘Feel It All Around’–Washed Out
‘Laura’–Girls
‘No Hope Kids’–Wavves
‘Desert Fun’–the Mayfair Set
‘Guys Eyes’–Animal Collective
‘Cheerleader’–Grizzly Bear
‘How Bout You’–Hype
‘Spent’–Pissed Jeans
‘Summertime Clothes’–Animal Collective
‘Ring Ring’–Sleigh Bells
‘White Sand Beach’–Bro Knights
‘Maybach Music 2′–Rick Ross ft. Lil Wayne, Kanye West, T-Pain
‘Daily Routine’–Animal Collective
‘Here To Fall’–Yo La Tengo
‘Something In the Way’–Best Coast
‘Iron Lemonade’–Black Moth Super Rainbow
‘Workers Comp’–Mos Def
‘Bad Romance’–Lady Gaga
‘Pyrex Vision’–Raekwon
‘Love In Vain’–the Big Pink
‘Break Up’–Mario ft. Gucci Mane, Sean Garrett
‘I Quit Girls’–Japandroids
‘Contender’–the Pains of Being Pure at Heart
‘Surfin’–Memory Cassette
‘Two Weeks’–Grizzly Bear
‘Hey Annie’–Annie
‘Shine Blockas’–Big Boi ft. Gucci Mane
‘Deadbeat Summer’–Neon Indian
‘This Is Not My Home (After Bruegel)’–Alec Ounsworth
‘I’m Watching You’–Jay Reatard
‘Where U Shop’–Gucci Mane
‘If I Had a Heart’–Fever Ray
‘Losing Feeling’–No Age
‘D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)’–Jay-Z
‘Walkabout’–Atlas Sound ft. Panda Bear
‘Swag Surfin’–Lil Wayne
‘Slow Motion’–Tiny Vipers
‘Careful What You Say’–Class Actress
‘We All Hate You’–Wolf Eyes
‘Rockin’ That Shit’–the-Dream
‘My Life, My Swag’–jj
‘Daniel’–Bat for Lashes
‘I’m Confused’–Handsome Furs
‘I’ll Make Ya’–Major Lazer ft. Santigold, Mr. Lex
‘Paper Lace’–Sunset Rubdown
‘Wholehearted Mess’–Bear in Heaven
‘See the Sea (Red)’–Vitalic
‘Lisztomania’–Phoenix

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Home

Pop Novels episode one: ‘Home’
Wed. Dec. 2, 2009

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‘Home’–Brian Eno and David Byrne
‘Going to Georgia’–the Mountain Goats
‘Sister’–Sufjan Stevens
‘I Can’t Stand It’–the Velvet Underground
‘The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth’–Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
‘Marie Cherie’–Annie
‘Daily Routine’–Animal Collective
‘My Girls’–Animal Collective
‘Suffer the Children’–Tears for Fears
‘This Is Not My Home (After Bruegel)’–Alec Ounsworth
‘The Road Leads Where It’s Led’–Secret Machines
‘I Don’t Want to Grow Up’–Scarlett Johansson
‘Beautiful View’–Luna
‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’–the Animals
‘Now’–Mates of State
‘Here Should Be My Home’–No Age
‘Hyper-ballad’–Björk
‘Indian Summer’–Beat Happening
‘My House’–Lou Reed
‘No Better Place’–Fountains of Wayne
‘Emma’s House’–the Field Mice
‘Neighborhood 3 (Power Out)’–Arcade Fire
‘Handsome Furs Hate This City’–Handsome Furs
‘Grendel’s Mother’–the Mountain Goats
‘Mother’–John Lennon
‘I Feel Like Going Home’–Yo La Tengo
‘Everything That Happens’–Brian Eno and David Byrne

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Living life in a post-’Merriweather Post Pavilion’ world, or: how the best album of the year keeps getting better

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January 6, 2009
So you get
Merriweather Post Pavilion the day it comes out and you’re listening to it and you’re thinking, Nice, this is like a streamlined Feels or a poppier Strawberry Jam. Then it ends and from your bed you use your stereo remote to press play and listen to the whole thing over again. Now it’s more like the best thing you’ve ever heard. Later that night, after you’ve eaten dinner and called a few people (to talk about Merriweather Post Pavillion, or not) you go back and explore individual songs. You listen to ‘My Girls’ several times in a row. Or ‘Also frightened.’ Or ‘Summertime Clothes.’ Or ‘Lion in a Coma.’ Or ‘Brother Sport.’

The rest of January
The next morning you drive around listening to
Merriweather Post Pavilion with your friends in your car. You get to about ‘Daily Routine’ before you get to where you’re going and have to stop. On the drive home you finish the album.

You find the Kids on Holiday video review really funny and ‘wish you had thought to do something like that.’ You consider bringing your MacBook around with you and filming people while loudly making fun of them, like they do in all their videos (you watch them all). Also, you totally agree that the ‘My Girls’ video is lame because it blatantly shows the Roland keyboards/synthesizers.

You listen to Merriweather Post Pavilion pretty much nonstop for the next week (month) or so. Once you get past the almost too-obvious didgeridoo-sounding part at the beginning, you love ‘Lion in a Coma.’ You love ‘Sometimes the sun will shine, yes I’m just feelin’ fine/ Sometimes I’m not aware of where I am or what I care/ Sometimes I’m well-to-do but I don’t know what to do/ Sometimes I don’t agree with my thoughts on bein’ free’ and the slowed down ‘please don’t leave me’ part really ‘reminds you of something.’ You understand that ‘Taste’ is about taste and that is so cool. You can’t stop singing ‘are you also friiiiiightened.’ ‘Bluish’ is one of the most romantic songs you’ve ever heard. ‘My Girls’ makes you want kids, badly. You also love how quickly its ‘four walls and adobe slabs’ line became such a thing.

You do blind contour drawings of the band members on enormous pieces of butcher paper and leave them hanging in your living room for weeks.

February to April
You kind of forget about
Merriweather Post Pavilion. Or at least you get swept up in all of this new lo-fi. You hate the name the Pains of Being Pure at Heart but it doesn’t sound bad. Your friend burns it for you. Later on, you’re looking at Pitchfork and notice the new Wavves album got an 8.1. You seriously contemplate whether or not you should buy it. Finally, you do. You decide it’s worth it. It’s really good and ‘way more listenable than you thought.’ By now you’re completely swept up in the beachy shit-gaze aesthetic. Vivian Girls! Blank Dogs mp3s! Woods’ new album! Japandroids! ‘Love is a Wave’!

Late in April you go to a Crystal Stilts/Wavves show. Wavves won’t stop acting cooler than everybody and somehow all of Crystal Stilts’ guitars break, prompting their disappointingly uncool guitarist to banter awkwardly about football, the weather. Still, it was a pretty good show, you think. Cool, at least. You still listen to Merriweather Post Pavilion but not as often and not as an album, either: you listen to certain songs but kind of forget about the whole thing.

You are looking forward to the new Grizzly Bear record.

You have a fever the week Veckatimest comes out and, after listening to it, you’re not that impressed. Mainly just because you feel like you should, you listen to it a couple more times––even once ‘outdoors’––but still feel bored by it. You’re glad you  have it though and can see yourself listening it to it more later maybe.

How can this possibly compete with Merriweather Post Pavilion, you think, chuckling. However, you really, really like the whole outdoorsy Animal Collective/Grizzly Bear conceptual/natural aesthetic. Soon, of course, the outdoors/relaxed/contemplative aesthetic mixes with the lo-fi scene to create a brand new genre. The summer begins.

A chillwave summer
You buy into chillwave
almost immediately. You read Gorilla vs. Bear often and really appreciate ‘what they’re doing’ but don’t really care. Wavves and, like, the Mayfair Set is enough for you, you think. Soon, though, you can’t resist: you download Washed Up’s ‘Feel It All Around,’ the Big Pink’s ‘Velvet,’ Neon Indian’s scene-definingly-titled ‘Terminally Chill’ and ‘Deadbeat Summer,’ and countless Memory Tapes/Memory Cassette tracks. Also, someone at work gives you a CD-R with a bunch of Best Coast songs on it, ‘Sun Was High (So Was I)’ being one of them. Your friend burns you nº 2 by jj, too: summery. You’re totally sold now. Your chillwave playlist grows daily and you love how all of the artwork is so appealing and beachy; it’s such ‘a look.’ (Side note: You really like the xx mp3s you’ve heard but hesitate labeling them chillwave. You know they’re more advanced, or something.) However, you have not forgotten about Merriweather Post Pavilion. On the contrary. As soon as summer comes you are instantly brought back to it’s rich, warm, almost sweaty world. ‘Summertime Clothes’ goes side by side with all of your chillwave songs on mixes. You practically scream at how good it sounds when Avey Tare sings ‘my bed is a pool and the walls are on fire.’ ‘When the sun goes down we’ll go out again’ gets stuck in your head for weeks.

You think you own everything Animal Collective’s ever done until your friend sends you a link to the Amazon page of Campfire Songs. You’re considering spending $60+ on it when the same friend texts you later that day saying his other friend just got Campfire Songs on a torrent and he can burn it for you. Whew, you think. At the same time, in the back of your head, all you can think about is owning the actual CD. The next day you read something about Animal Crackbox. Immediately you check Ebay, thinking the all-vinyl collection of live material would be ‘good to have.’ They’re already all going for like $400. You bookmark the page. You buy a few múm albums only because you read that Avey Tare’s wife Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir used to be a member. In a record store in New York you impulsively buy the couple’s awful experimental album Pullhair Rubeye.

The new Wavves song sounds like Animal Collective. The new Atlas Sound song basically is Animal Collective. Filter magazine’s cover story on Animal Collective is inexplicably called ‘An Interior Design.’ You don’t read it, of course.

You’re even more addicted now. You seriously consider buying crates of Merriweather Post Pavilion CDs and handing them out to complete strangers, saying, You have never heard anything better than this. You throw around terms like perfect album and find yourself comparing everything––food, pants––to Merriweather Post Pavilion. Whenever you’re in a record store, you pick up the Animal Collective albums on vinyl––Strawberry Jam looks amazing––and carry them around with you just so you can hold them and feel them.

You really, really want sheets of the trippy optical illusion image from Merriweather Post Pavilion’s cover to decorate…every surface of your house with. You think making boxers out of the fabric printed with the Merriweather Post Pavilion cover pattern would be a great idea.

Late one night, you and your friend spend hours watching live footage of Animal Collective on YouTube. ‘Summertime Clothes’ live seems amazing. It’s all slowed down and even crunchier; ‘My Girls’ sounds completely different.

All of a sudden, you can’t listen to anything else again. It’s all Animal Collective all the time. Also, you revisit your older Animal Collective albums. Could Sung Tongs be any better, you scoff. And Danse Manatee: my god! Feels is just too good, you think during the retracted noises that end of ‘Do You See the Words’ on your third straight listen. Soon, you find yourself spending days listening to nothing but Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished. And you even convince yourself that the beginning part of ‘April and the Phantom’ sounds good. (’It’s awesome in the car,’ you tell people.) And that torrent of Campfire Songs sounds even more amazing now. (You still want the CD though; the tiny disruptions that iTunes puts between songs are driving you crazy. You decide you need uninterrupted rainy strumming.) All of a sudden, in a panic, you realize that somehow you don’t own Here Comes the Indian.

Fall and winter are kind
You see that Pitchfork gives ‘What Would I Want? Sky’ a 10 and the entire
Fall Be Kind EP an 8.9. Like, what else would they do, you think. By now you’re a little sick of Animal Collective.

You make a playlist about home and decide to include ‘My Girls’ on it. This, of course, inspires you to revisit the entire album. Amazingly, it sounds brand new again. It’s as if you’ve never listened to ‘Guys Eyes’ or ‘Daily Routine’ before. ‘Shit, fuck,’ you mutter as you quickly google the lyrics. All you really remembered about ‘Daily Routine’ was the slow-really-fast-really-really-fast bit at the beginning. Listening now, and reading the lyrics, it’s so much more. It’s amazing, and it’s sort of ‘My Girls Pt. 2’: ‘Make sure my kid’s got a jacket/ And coat and shoes and I/ Strap a stroller to my back/ Bouncing along every crack.’ Beautiful. How did you never notice this before. You want, like, a wife and kids really, really badly now. It’s so good, jesus, you think. ‘What can I do as traffic pass?/ Guard my girl from muffler’s black gas.’ ‘Guys Eyes,’ too, sounds new and fuller, you think. You realize that you never thought about the words in these two songs. You don’t know quite why. Maybe the melodies were so distracting or the words were hard to understand.

Now though, almost a year after Merriweather Post Pavilion came out, it almost sounds like you’re playing it for the first time. ‘Guys Eyes’: ‘If I could just hold all the thoughts in my head and just keep them for you/ If I could just purge all the urges that I have and keep them for you.’ Perfect, you think, unable to believe that you never fully got these songs before.

You listen to Merriweather Post Pavilion several more times, refocusing on parts and songs you may have neglected before.

Obviously 2009 was the year of Merriweather Post Pavilion, you think as you read over Pitchfork’s Merriweather Post Pavilion review. But you also notice that the review, which was posted on January 5, 2009, is boring and the songs themselves are barely mentioned. The album’s brilliance could never, ever fully sink in within such a short pediod. Even with dozens and dozens of early-January listens, it took a full year for it to really unfold and show you just how completely incredible it is. And, you think, there’s much more to see.

You still really want some kids.

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