No Filler Music Podcast - Human In The Machine: Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

After the success of Person Pitch, Noah Lennox took those lessons learned with him back into the studio with the rest of Animal Collective to create another touchstone record of the 2000s. This time, the melodic electronica that felt more man than machine was refined and amplified to an infectious, hypnotic, and deeply human electronic record. The record improves even more on their trademark harmonies with Noah and Avey Tare sounding better together than ever, and the lyrical themes very much a continuation of Noah's lean toward introspection in Person Pitch. One of the greatest records from the 2010s that could only have spawned from the hive mind of Animal Collective, join us as we fawn and gush over the many reasons we love this record. Tracklist: Summertime Clothes Also Frightened Daily Routine Guys Eyes No More Runnin' Brother Sport Visit tiestatea.com and use promo code NOFILLER15 for 15% off at checkout. A bold tea for a bold you. This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Pantheon is a proud partner of AKG by Harman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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electronic is the process is sort of electronic, but we, a lot of the samples we use, you know, it's sort of unlike, like, like for Noah's record, which we all found inspiring in terms of what he could do as samples, you know, but for this we were trying to sample more like acoustic instruments, like ourselves playing kind of acoustic things in the practice space, so maybe to someone who doesn't know the process, it might sound a little more like a kind of going back to like a live playing sort of thing, but to us it feels, I think, more electronic. And welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin, with me as always is my brother Travis, and today we are covering Animal Collective's album from 2009 Merry Weather Post Pavilion. Last week we covered Panda Bear's album Person Pitch that came out a few years before this one. And as Brian mentioned in the intro there, they pulled heavily from what Panda Bear did with samples and how he approached recording person pitch when they went about recording Merryweather.

So this is one of those albums, Trave, that, I mean, you know, it was inevitable. we were going to cover it. I think it worked out real nice to cover it right after person pitch because I think it really, like this is, to quote what Josh said on our episode last week when we covered person pitch, like this is like that sound, but like blown up to like huge proportions. It's just got like a massive feel to it. It's, it's I think one of the best sounding albums in this genre to come out in the last decade for sure. Yeah, and this is, I think a lot of people's introduction to Animal Collective too.

I think it was mine, honestly. I don't think I had really, and I'm pretty sure you turned me onto this record. But there was something about this sound that sort of elevated them and got them some national attention. Because, you know, they made the rounds on the talk shows. Like, I remember seeing them do like my girls on either Conan. or letterman. So, you know, they, you know, they made it, quote, unquote, with this record. Because, you know, there's just something about it.

It just sounds so different compared to everything else that was coming out. And it's like when you know their history and you go, like, know their early stuff and then you hear what Panda Bear did on person pitch, like, they basically just married the two, you know, and the sound is just like infectious, man. There's just something about this record. It's such a great listen. I learned a lot about the recording process on this article that I'm going to be pulling a bunch of quotes from. And yeah, if you're not really familiar with Animal Collective, if you're not familiar with this album,

I say jump back and listen to our episode that came out last week, which shout out to Josh Stewart once again for joining us and gushing over Panda Bear's person pitch. One of the reasons why Animal Collective, I mean, they're kind of forced to approach their recording process a bit differently for this album. So to name off the roster, we've got Dave Portner, also goes by Avey Ter, Noah Lennox, also known as Panda Bear, and Brian White's, also known as Geologist, and Joshua Caleb Dibb, also known as Deakin. So that's Animal Collective, but Deakin, who plays guitar in the band, stepped aside just after the album that came out right before this one, Strawberry Jam. So they lost a member, and they lost a guitar player. So they kind of had to approach recording in a little different way, and what they decided to do was just kind of take the same approach that Noah did for person pitch and do a, you know,

heavily sampled, mostly sampled electronic record, which is something new for them. All right, Q, well, before we get into that, let's take a second here to talk about Testa T and our partnership with them. So, yeah, we were talking last week about their chai tea and how amazing it was. And I know, Q, you finally got your sample box in the mail and you tried out their nutty almond to cream with, and you made up a, it sounds like you made up a nice latte. Right? Yeah, dude, the way I did it, so this is a herbal tea.

It's got like apple, almonds, cinnamon. And I steamed up some milk and made it all frothy. Threw in a little bit of sugar and some vanilla, dude. That sounds amazing. Dude, I can't fucking express the joy that I had with that first sip, man. Yeah, dude. It almost tasted like a cinnamon oatmeal. Yeah, dude.

Good call. Because, like, if you take a whiff of that stuff, it does kind of smell like oatmeal cookies or something. Yeah, dude. Yeah, I'm drinking the lean green machine right now, dude. And it's great. Just by itself, just plain, really good. But yeah, what I was going to suggest for those out there go to their website right now. And like one of their, you know, they've got much like many websites, they have a nice slider carousel at the top.

And like the second slide, it's got their holiday teas. Dude, we were talking about this tea that we read about called Cocoa. It's a tiramisu coffee black tea. tea. And we were reading the ingredients. Let me just share this with you, folks. Black tea, roasted coffee beans, white chocolate, chocolate, sweet blackberry leaves, freeze-dried yogurt, and other natural flavors. But, I mean, how amazing does that sound? It's crazy, dude. Like there's little yogurt, like it looks like little Hershey's Kiss, uh, yogurt pieces in there. And that's all loosely, if so. Imagine that all just like melting and steeping in the tea.

Oh, my goodness. We've got to try that, dude. We've got to try it. Anyway, if you have a tea lover in your life, this is the perfect holiday gift for them. And again, if you go to the website, they've got all sorts of gift, little gift boxes and stuff like that.

So they've got all three of their new holiday teas. They've got a bundle. It's called the Fire Peppermint Coco bundle. But yeah, they got all sorts of good stuff. Check it out. TSTAT.com. And again, when you get to the checkout, put in the promo code, No Fueler 15,

and you'll get 15%. off your purchase. Testa T, a bold tea for a bold U. All right, Q. So you were saying that you did a little digging on how they approached the recording process and what made it so unique. Yeah, so for starters, let's name off the three singles. You've probably heard my girls.

It's probably one of their biggest, if not the biggest, their biggest hit. Yeah, I kind of put them on the map in the 2000s. If you don't know Animal Collective, you might be familiar with my girls. We're not going to play it. We're going to jump right through because I got a lot of songs to play. They also released summertime clothes and Brother Sport. So those are the three singles. Brother Sport, maybe we'll play it as the outro unless you had another outro on mine.

That song is so much fun, man. And again, and we'll talk about this too with these songs. It's more of the same kind of lyrical themes, like very introspective lyrics. It's kind of the way Panda Bear. Noah Lennox approaches his songwriting, right, from what we learned last week. Right. Like Brother Sport is about his brother, right? Daily routine is literally about his daily routine.

You know, my girls is about his girls, right? Anyway, so more of that on this record. So one big thing, I feel like a big contributor to, I mean, like the overall feeling of the record and how it sounds has to do with the recording space. So they recorded at a recording studio called Sweet Tea that is in Oxford, Mississippi. Do it? Tiesti? Yep. The way that Dave puts it, he says, sweet tea is amazing.

It's the vibeest studio I've ever been in. It feels like you're making music in a living room that just happens to have a Neve 8038 recording console in it. It was excellent. So I'm quoting from soundonsound.com. And we've used Sound on Sound before, dude. If you really want to, like, know everything there is to know about, like, the equipment used and the studio space and the process, Sound on Sound has a lot of awesome articles on specific albums and the recording process. So, you know, so it felt like just one big living room space. They also had, like, their recording console in the same room as their amps.

and everything and their samplers and everything. So they plugged directly into that. And the main thing here that I want to focus on before we play our first pick, so they decided to actually trigger all their samples live. So there's points in the record when you can hear them speed up and tempo just slightly or something like that, which is, it's so cool, man. Yeah, I mean, that actually makes me think of, on the beginning of daily routine, Like, you can hear them.

You can hear the buttons being pushed. Like, you can literally hear it, which is so cool. So, yeah, I'm going to quote, Ben Allen. So he's the co-producer. They're all playing samples and sequences and recorded material with no synchronization protocol between any of their machines. They've created all these loops on their little samplers, and they play them just like a guitar player would play in time with a drummer.

So, yeah, they might have, like, tiny little loops that they press on, that they trigger with their pads, you know, but they don't just lay out the entire song as a sequenced, like, sample. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So Brian here, geologist, says, everything's not totally locked in and rigid,

even though we try and play it as close to a locked-in way as possible. I think even a casual listener's brain can maybe subconsciously pick up a little bit of a looseness here. That's interesting. And that's what gives it that human element, you know? It's so cool. And that's what makes it. Like you said, like electronic, but like not as structured and rigid as something that's been super, you know, a lot of times with electronic music, like there's like the precision element.

You know, it's everything is like, I mean, what was that term that you said? A looping protocol. Is that what you said? Oh, so that's what Alan said, the producer, he said there was no synchronization protocol. Synchronization protocol. That just sounds so like clinical. Robotic. Yeah. But I mean, obviously that's an industry term and probably is referring to tying up all the loose ends and stuff and like making it sound more like you said robotic or whatever.

So I think that's great. And I think that totally adds to the charm of the record and like the sound of it, you know, the human aspect of it. The best way that I could I can think of to describe what it is is, is it's. Animal Collective doing an electronic record. You know what I mean? Like only they would do it that way. Yeah, they're using these machines as just other instruments and not like tools, maybe, if that's the term to use.

But you know what I mean? They're playing it like it's an instrument. And so there's going to be the imperfections in there. Exactly. All right, let's quit blabbering, dude. Let's get into it. Yeah. So we're going to jump straight to track three, one of my favorites, dude.

Yeah, this one always stands out to me. So we've got two clips to play here. So again, this is track three on Merry Weather Post Pavilion. This song is called Also Frightened. So one thing I've always loved is how Noah and Dave harmonize. Like it's almost like it's one person singing. I mean, it's not. But like the way that they mix their vocals together, it's just like it almost feels like one entity.

singing, you know? Yeah, well, it's interesting because as we heard last week on person pitch, Noah is really good at harmonizing with himself, you know? Yeah. So it's funny because that's such a key part of the animal collective sound is the harmonizing, right? That, you know, Noah, Noah had to harmonize with himself on his own records, you know, because that's such a part of, the way that he approaches melodies and stuff in his head is with, it's with, harmonies and stuff. So yeah, you're right. And it's very, it's still very much got, it's got that like Brian Wilson, California dreaming kind of, you know, 60s vibes. Yeah. To it. Right. And the way they harmonize. So something magical happens pretty soon here. We'll queue up in a second. But let's

dive into the lyrics, dude. I know you got them on the ready. I've never really like, you know, like I pick up words here and there, you know, but I've never really actually read the lyrics. Well, it's exactly, you know, like I was saying earlier, it's more of the same as far as these really personal, you know, we're basically just in Noah's head, you know what I mean, when it comes to everything from, you know, his relationship with his mom, which was what he explored on person pitch, which was a couple years earlier. But we know that he has these kids. He's a new, he's a new father, right? And so like a couple more years have passed since person pitch and this song is literally about taking his kids. He has two two girls, I think, taking his kids

to the doctor's office. That's what the song is about. What? It's a commentary on, you know, as a young dad, he's still in awe of and very protective of his children. So like the imagery is like, you know, sounds like he's, he's talking about this trip to the doctor's office as if it's this like, this harrowing adventure or like this this like dark path that they're having to go to like he's protective of them and so like taking him to the doctor's office is like this this uh you know this harrowing thing that he's going to have to do yeah you look at the verse right venture my way into the dark where we can sweat one takes one by the hand let them crawl into the logs that damn brown jeans the hue of their path whoa very poetic

but um dude maybe that's maybe that's what uh avi brings to that you know what dude i keep i keep flipping between their station names and their real names yeah yeah maybe that's something that a v brings to the table is the more like poetic uh lyrics you know what i mean now listen to this man the second verse right um now you know i'm i'm going purely off of genius dot com people's annotations and and the way that people are perceiving these lyrics. But, you know, it seems to hold up. The lyric that says, From our window, two lanterns draw signs on the night.

And light are two shadows. I watch with delight. This is, you know, interpreted as the light from street lamps and how it allows him to see the two silhouettes of his children and how he's filled with joy. I don't know what time he's taking him to the doctor, but it sounds like it's. It's a nighttime appointment or something.

It's one of those midnight appointments. Yeah. The classic midnight appointment. Here's a classic to me, panda bear type lyric. Will I want them to be who they will be or to be more like their dad? I love that line. Yeah, dude. I love that line.

And, you know, it's probably something every dad wonders and every mom wonders. Like, do I want them to be like me, you know, or do whether I want them to be their own person, you know? Right. You know, my guess is most parents want them to be their own person in some regard, right? But yeah, I mean, that, that, again, it's like we're just, it's like we're inside his brain, you know what I mean? And he's just sharing this stream of thought with us, you know, stream of consciousness almost. Yeah, and speaking of that, dude, stream of thought. Like this next clip, dude, from this song is probably my favorite moment in an animal collective song.

it shows off their mastery in repetition, dude. Like, no one does it like them. Yes, and this record exemplifies that. Yes, dude. Here is clip two from Also Frightened. I mean, some of the biggest goosebumps, I think I've ever gotten the first time I heard that song, dude. Yeah, because you just didn't know when it was going to stop.

Yeah, dude. Like the third time that he repeated that phrase. Because each phrase is like two. too, oh, you also frightens, you know, because he says it. Yeah. And then the second time it's a little higher pitched. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The third time that he went through that loop, and then he continued doing it, I was like, like, what? This is unbelievable. Yeah, and it's, it's so simple. I feel like, I think Josh actually commented on this last week was like, you know, it's such a simple thing to just repeat something. But like, they do it with,

with such like mastery, you know, there's an escalation of it too with each repetition. There is. And then it kind of gets to this like this chrysindo, I guess, at the very end when it then transitions abruptly back to no one should call you a dreamer. The chorus number two is what they're saying. But that's how the song closes out. But yeah. Yeah.

What a great song, man. Something else I thought that was pretty cool. That's a little bit unorthodox in like recording practices. practices, says here that Animal Collective set up its PA systems in the control room in an attempt to replicate the group's live sound. And Brian says, since so much of the album was electronic and sample based, we use those PA speakers to make the samples. So from what I gather from that, they had a mic facing the PA speakers and they recorded what was coming out of the PA speakers when they were making the samples. So the samples themselves had the ambience and reverb, you know, of these loud PA speakers bouncing off the walls in the control room. And that got picked up in the recorded samples.

So, and then when they take those samples and record them with their, you know, trigger pads and whatever else, those samples are going to sound huge and have so much like depth and again, like reverb and like more of an like organic feel because it's not coming straight from the synthesizer program. It's coming from a recording of their speakers. I might be completely off on that. And if someone with more like audio engineering know-how than me is listening, please correct me if you have a better idea of what they're saying here. But yeah, I mean, it is like you're saying, it's just such a, I don't want to say a wall of sound because that's sort of a reserved term for shoegaze. Or Phil Specter. Yeah, it does kind of have that quality of it, though, where it's just like you're just washed over with the sound. I'm going to say a wall of sound, dude.

I don't care. Yeah, no, I think it works too because they recorded a lot of the live percussion in this really narrow hallway in sweet tea. It says basically one side of the hallway was wood and the other was metal. It was really narrow, but it also had a high ceiling. We listened to our footsteps in there and thought it had a really good sound and we wanted to put the mark of the place on the record. So that's one thing. They have live percussion samplings and recordings from the super narrow really revered. every hallway. And they also construct a lot of the beats one part at a time. So Noah would go in

and with just a tom and a snare and he'd hit the tom and the side of the snare. And then we might layer that eight or nine times. A lot of the size of the percussion sounds is because there's a close mic and maybe two room mics on one instrument overdubbed eight times. So you might have 24 tracks representing one part. So 24 tracks could go into one tom and snare hit. So you want to talk about a wall of sound, dude. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. It's hard to wrap your head around. How do they make this sound, this large, just, how do they make this sound, man?

Like, all so frightened. Just, this song alone just sounds so big, you know? I don't know how they do it, man. You and I caught them on this tour, too. I just remember that was it, man. You were just, if you saw them live back then, right? I just remember that's what it was. It was just this, you're just overcome with the wall of sound.

Well, yeah, and to touch on their live shows, dude, like, they're never going to play one of those, one of their songs as it sounds, you know, on the recording. And a lot of times they will take new songs that aren't even recorded yet and play around with them on stage during performances before they sit down and record. I'm going to quote Brian again, you're geologists. He says, there aren't a lot of rules in our songs. we have effects processors on stage. Some nights, if you're bored of doing the same thing you did the night before,

you can try and play around with a different effect or trigger a loop differently to see how it works with timing. Occasionally, those experiments on stage work and they make their way into a song. I think that just goes back to the way they approach their songs and the way that even their songs are constantly evolving, you know, just with the way that they play them live. and I think that lends itself to like a more human-feeling electronic album, you know? Right. Like I know that they brought a lot of these Meriweather songs to their live sets before they went to Sweet Tea Studio.

And, you know, those are the kind of experiments that they're doing on stage that probably made, made its way to quite a few of these songs. Totally. All right, let's play our next one, dude. I feel like I'm just like dropping all these quotes left and right. I'm just like getting them all out of the way, man. Yeah, I mean, I feel like we're excited about this record, I think, you know, so we're sort of getting ahead of ourselves quite a bit. I want to get all these quotes out there so that you can like keep these facts in mind while you listen to these songs because there's just so much, so much magic, dude, that goes on in an animal collective song. I think maybe my second favorite song is this next one that we're going to play.

this one is track five on the record it's called daily routine we got two clips for this one as well this one still gets me dude i know man i was about to say i just got goosebumps just right there um there's just uh one thing i always love is when it's when the uh the percussion changes at the start of i think the verse oh yeah yeah yeah um you notice a change in the in the in the in the percussion and it's just awesome dude it just sounds great and um you know you know you know know if you saw them live like they're doing the percussion right there you know a lot of times they're kind of you know they've got like drum pads and drum uh i'm pretty sure like both like noa and and maybe one of the other members had like these drum machine and drum pads with them that they would

just be banging right live and i'm sure that's how they did in the studio too yeah but um now dude do do they have an actual proper drummer that's probably a dumb question no okay that and that's what's fucking cool right so like they don't they don't have a proper it so it's it's a floor tom It's a snare drum. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. And maybe, maybe, you know, a couple floor drums, you know, on stage.

But no, they don't have. Yeah. So they're up there doing that, you know, between the three of them, kind of, kind of of playing these, these random drum kit, you know, pieces from the drum kit, you know. That always, to me, lends itself to like that. I've always described them as, like, having, like, this tribal feel, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

To me, I think that that kind of percussion. always always feels like that to me. Yeah, and I think the way that they experiment with their vocals, as a group, just in general, sort of speaks to that kind of, you know, harkens back to like the tribal type stuff, you know, where the vocals are, the voice is used as an instrument, you know. Yeah. So A. B. Tair and Pander Bear are the only, they're the only two that sing, just to throw it out of that, that out there.

Geologist is really just like the synth wizard. Like, that's what he's doing the whole time, just hitting synth. pads and doing all kinds of crazy stuff on his little synthesizer. And dude, I got to bring this up because I've always thought it was cool. Geologists would always have like a miners flashlight headband. So you would always see his head bobbing around with like his light kind of going back and forth. And he would use that to be able to see his, you know, keyboard and synthesizer a little bit

better on stage. All right. So I'm going to read up on that the really cool. water droplet kind of sample thing that starts off the song and how it kind of speeds up. It's kind of a cool, the way they approach this. So I think this is Ben Allen, the producer. He says daily routine starts with this little arpegated synth thing and the sound of a water drop. The guys had this really specific idea about what they wanted to do.

And so we cut up the arpeggiation into individual notes and just put a mic up and recorded Dave making water drops happen in the sink. Then we cut those into individual samples, and I went into logic and wrote a tempo map that accelerated over the course of 30 to 60 seconds. So the song starts, and you hear one little note of the arpegeation and one little water drop, and then they slowly speed up until it goes into the song. Wow. So that's actually all programmed out in a quote tempo map. So I guess he builds up this tempo, this map that is accelerating over the course of 60 seconds,

or however long until it ends. So that would have just kept, if he increased that to like 90 seconds, 120 seconds, it would have just kept going faster and faster. That's awesome. But that's cool. That's cool that it's, they actually picked up an actual, like,

they recorded water droplets in the sink. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. All right, man. If you thought that that repetition was unreal and also frightened and just, you know, caught you off guard, just wait. Clip two here I'm about to play Daily Routine. This is definitive my favorite animal collective moment, dude. Hands down.

It just period. Yep. All right. I think so, dude. Let's hear it. All right, here we go. Clip two from Daily Routine. Let me tell you what always gets me about this one, dude.

first off like the this spacious like enveloping reverby just bouncing off the walls sound that they get yeah just really I mean it really like pulls you in and it is it's very like droney like hypnotizing and this really showcases that you know human-like feel that they were going for by by deciding to trigger these samples live while they recording it. There's like an ebb and flow in like the tempo, you know, like in the way he, he holds a line for a little bit longer before repeating it. It's not in perfect tempo the whole time. It, it slows up and he will hold, hold on towards a little bit longer the third or fourth time around. It just, it's, it's beautiful, dude. Again, dude, like you, you know, like I've been saying this whole time,

like the human element of this record. And just in general, I think that's what, that's, if you were to use a word to describe animal collective, I think that could be it, just human, you know. There's so many things in ways that they experiment with their, with their voice, you know, especially some of the early stuff that the record sung tongues that we, that we covered a while back. That is such a fun album, dude. But yeah, and just thinking of them like, like, like,

Like, I don't know how much they would lay down in one go. You know what I mean? Like, I know that they, they would record these tracks live, but I don't know how much they went back and layered on top of it. But, like, just thinking of them, all three of them in this living room recording space, all, like, physically triggering these pads. You know what I mean? Like, for each go-around of these, like, repetitive moments, it's just so cool, dude.

Like, that's something that's hard to pull off live for, you know, there's artists, like electronic artists that, that don't even try to do this stuff live. They'll even, like, bring just their laptop and press a button, you know, and just maybe trigger one loop for the whole song. And, you know what I mean? Like, it's just so cool that they are experimenting with, you know, knob turning and synth triggering in the studio while they're recording it. And they just, they leave in those imperfections.

And they leave in those weird effects that they tried something, you know, they tried something slightly different. They leave it in. And that's, again, like what gives it that human feel, you know? Yeah, exactly. Anyways, man, I love that song so much. So this one I threw in at the last minute because I had forgotten how great this song is. And I want to play it because it's a little more simple.

I think it focuses their, uh, harmonizing a little bit more. It's not so much of a wall of sound on this one. And I love, they do like this kind of round-robin effect. I don't know if that's what it's called, but, you know, where two different people are seeing different things simultaneously and it all kind of connects together. This one is called guys' eyes. It's another thing they do really well, dude. The way they loop their vocals are so cool. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I'm not all that familiar with their early stuff.

Have they always experimented with looping, or is that sort of unique to this record? They've absolutely have, yeah. Okay. I actually caught them, it must have been three or four years ago now. They did a tour. It was just Noah and Dave, and they did this tour where they played sung tongues in its entirety. And yeah, it was just them. They were sitting down the whole time, and it's just them, their acoustic guitars.

And yeah, they were looping the whole time to create all these like layered vocals and stuff because it's just it's just them too who's seeing. Yeah. I love this song. It's got like some really, really great like Beach Boys kind of vibes to it and the way that they like orchestrate their harmonizing. Have you ever heard this one, dude? I have. It's just been a long time because I haven't hit play on this record in years.

So I'm kind of listening to it to it fresh. Yeah, I remember this. track. Totally. Well, I got one more clip from it because I like the way it goes where it heads to, and there's just a lot more really cool, like, layered vocals that happen. So here's clip two from Guy's eyes. Yeah, I like that the vocal play with like, you know, some of them are kind of in the background yelling these sort of random lines, right? Yeah. They're sort of playing off of each other. There's really no other band that does this. You know, they really are unique. It really just, it, it, comes down to their approach to their recordings and how they use their, you know,

synthesizers and the way they use looping pedals and all that. And it's the repetition, dude. This has just been a love fest, dude, for these songs. Like, I feel like we're talking, I'm talking like a mile a minute here trying to, yeah, trying to articulate. Just gushing over this album, dude. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's one of those records that to me, you know, I typically go, sometimes I'll go a few years without listening to it. And then, I'll push play and I'll be like, God damn, if this wasn't such a special record, you know, and it just, there's nothing else like it, you know, and it really stood out in that era. This was right before the 2010s, so kind of the 2009, this is right when we started New Dust,

the music blog that we talked. Right when we started, dude. The same year. So we were right there for it. I'm sure we covered it on the blog. But yeah, it's kind of crazy to think about panda bear how important he was to not only this sound of like the sampling, right? And sort of the electronic aspect added to the sound of like this kind of indie sound, right? But then how person pitch sort of paved the way for chill wave, which was such a huge thing in the 2010s.

it's kind of crazy to think about. Here's what's even crazier, dude. We have to think customs in Portugal for his guitar getting held up. Everything comes down to customs. Yeah. In Portugal. It's kind of nutty. Yeah, but it's true.

That's chill wave started because his guitar got held up in Portugal. The things, dude, that happened in life, man. Butterfly effect, dude. All right, so I got a quote here to kind of wrap up what makes this album so special. If we haven't done a good enough job doing it ourselves. And then, you know, I have one more song to play. But here's something that Ben Allen says. Again, he's the producer.

He says, what they do is not like traditional songwriting. They're not pop music artists by any stretch. The experience of these songs together in an album is more important than the experience of one particular moment in a song. They're looking at this as a piece of art they've made. And it happens to have 11 songs on it. Modern music rarely does that anymore, and I think that's really cool. I mean, that's just what we preach here, dude.

I think the albums, for the most part, the albums that we cover on no failure are going to be those albums that are worth diving into as one piece, right? Like, listen to the whole album. And with Animal Collective, they're treating each album like one piece of art. All right, man. So this one's going to be short and sweet. I just wanted to squeeze this one in at the end. Another one of my favorites. This is track 10 on the album.

This one's called No More Running. Yeah, it's awesome. I hadn't heard that in a long, long time. I love that song. When Panda Bear chimes in, his little piece that he adds to it. The way they like drag out that word and just kind of like go up with it. Yeah. I'm not going to do it.

do it. I almost did it, but you're welcome. I feel good about not doing that just now. Yeah, you should feel good about that. But now, you know, it's just, I'm going to just say the word delightful. I don't know, man. It's just a, it's just a joyful experience to listen to this record. I was about to quote Dave Samson from the guard, I'm sorry, Dave Simpson from the guardian. You took the words right out of his mouth, dude. Joyful. Yeah, he says it's a joyful, transcendent record. Transcendent. That's good. Somehow reminiscent of kids let loose in a musical sandpit. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of how they... Childlike wonder.

They approach it with a lot of playfulness. They've always... This seems like that's core to animal collectors, right? Oh yeah, dude. Like they'll just make noises, you know, like hoops and hollers. Yeah. As an instrument. These guys are just having fun, man. And I'm guessing they've known each other for a long, long time, right? I know we talked about this. on the Song Tongs record. But like one of the songs that we played from Song Tongues, probably the one that I was like, what am I hearing?

It just sounded like some friends having fun with, you know, a recorder, you know, things that you would do like when you're just screwing around as a kid with friends and you got your talk and speak or whatever. What was that thing that Kevin McAllister has in Home Alone? Talk Boy? Talk boy. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it's just like you're just goofing around and playing around with your talk boy. And that's what it sounded like. on the Sung Tongues record. Oh, yeah, dude. Obviously, I'm joking a little bit, but like, I really appreciate the way that they approach songwriting because it's so unique and they don't take themselves seriously, I feel like. You really can't. This kind of music doesn't happen if you're taking yourself too seriously.

You don't get animal collect. collective if if they're you know approaching it all like methodically I mean yeah it was a methodic approach to it but like it's it's hard to say it you know because it it almost sounds like an insult but it's not like it's right it's what makes it so fun to listen to these guys because you can you you can tell they're having a blast you know with it yeah all right man that's it that is our love letter to Mary Weather Post pavilion this goes without saying but if you have not heard this record all the way through. Like, now it's the time to do it, right?

If you haven't been convinced yet, there's a ton of great stuff on this record that we didn't even mention. Yeah. And I'll say like these songs, you know, like their producer was saying, it's a piece of art. Yeah. These songs that we played tonight are even more, they have even more like an impactful, like, effects on you when you're listening to them one after the other and the way that they all

fit together. Yeah. This is a record that I think demands your attention. And track one in The Flowers, that song is intense. Yeah, yeah. And it's weird. Right. It just kind of makes you feel kind of off, which is like the perfect way to start off an

Animal Collective record. Especially when you're looking at the album cover, you know. Right. It's an optical illusion, one of those classic optical illusions. Yeah, classic optical illusion. But yeah, pull up the record, find a big image of it. Or if you have it, you know. grab it and hold on to it and stare at it as you listen to this record because it probably

adds to the experience. Yep. But yeah, one of the best records of the decade. I'm going to, let me name off here. I just, I mean, I was reading this and it just kept going, dude, as far as like top album lists. Yeah. The UK music magazine Clash, named it album of the year.

So did Spin Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and K-E-XP. That's your radio station, dude. That's my radio station. And there's quite a few other lists, of course, that it made it too. Yeah. I mean, if it wasn't, you know, a top album, it was highly praised at least, right? Oh, yes. I would love to see a publication out there that tanked it, that gave it a low score.

I don't think it's possible, dude. I dare you to do it, you know. All right, that's it, man. Wrap that puppy up. Dude, next week we're going to get even weirder, man. Yeah, we are going to get weirder. in like a shanty town pirates kind of way. Yeah.

We'll get into that later. Yeah. But we're going to cover Man Man next week. Yeah. And I don't know if we talked about this or not, but because I know we teased this episode. Oh, that's right. Weeks and weeks ago. Because we had recorded it.

We weren't happy with it. Yep. We didn't do it justice. So we're going to redo it. Yeah, I had this wild idea to just play one song and split it into three clips because it had like three, it had like three, like three. like distinct movements. Yeah, yeah, I went with it, but it didn't work out. Man Man has such a, there's so many great songs, you know. Yeah. In order for us to really sell these guys to you,

because I feel like it's going to be a little bit of a pitch. They are a hard sell. Yeah. We need to, we need to showcase at least three or four songs. So from multiple records. From a couple of records, yeah. So we're going to bring some songs from Six Demon Bag and Rabbit Habits. next week from Man Man, man. That's going to be fun, dude. I'm excited to redo it. So, yeah, a little peek behind the curtain, my friends. Sometimes these recordings don't work out.

You know, we're not perfect. Yeah. And you know what? We're not going to put an episode out. Doesn't hit the already low bar. The already low bar for no filler. So yeah, next week, Man, Man. And then we'll kick off our year-end episodes, dude.

So throughout the rest of the year, we're going to be bringing all of our favorite songs from this year. Best of 2021, that's going to be... My favorite time of year, man. Yeah, dude. It really, it's the most wonderful time of the year in many different ways. And you know what? I feel like it's lost a little bit of its magic

because this is the first year that we decided to do monthly What You Heard episodes, because that's pretty much the format. Yeah. But we're going to be bringing a bunch of new songs. We might bring some artists that we've covered, but it's going to be all songs from this year and man, I've got some doozies, dude.

Yeah, and we're going to basically over the span of four episodes, four weeks, we're going to throw 40 tracks at you. So 10 tracks a week. So it's just a ton of music. It's a blast because you're going to hear a bunch of different styles, a bunch of different genres. I know for a fact that, you know, I've got some stuff on here that Q you would never bring in a million years, which means metal.

Yeah. But anyway, yeah, so that'll be good times. That'll be starting in a couple of weeks, and that's how we'll close out the year. So, yeah, that was Animal Collective, Mary Weather Post Pavilion. Go listen to the record if you haven't already. Or if you have, and, you know, it's been a while, cue it up, you know. Yeah, for sure. It does not disappoint.

It never disappoints. Revisit this record. All right. Well, like we mentioned earlier, go visit tsathty.com. Get yourself some tea. I mean, this is like some artisan level tea, dude. The blends that they're making is just, I mean, unreal. It's great, man.

And I've been so blown away by the quality of the few cups that I've tried so far. So yeah, testa-tie.com, buy some tea for yourself. Buy some tea for, you know, the tea drinker in your life. You know, holiday season is just around the corner. Go check it out. They've got these great holiday flavors that they just released. I'm literally about to hit purchase right now. I'm not even kidding.

I want to buy that stamp. pack of the of the holiday teas because it just sounds freaking amazing. But yeah, in the checkout, use no filler 15 and you'll get 15% off your purchase. So again, that's tsatatcom. I would also like to thank AKG for sponsoring the network. We are part of the Pantheon podcast network. Go to pantheonpodcast.com. Yeah, you'll see us on there and then you'll see a bunch of other great music-related podcasts for you to enjoy. That is the network for all things music-centric when it comes to podcasts. And that's it.

Also, if you want another way to listen to our podcast other than Spotify or iTunes or however you listen, you can go to our website. It's backup. I've redone it. It's really just a web player for the pod. It is super clean, my man. Thank you. I like it.

I like the way it looks, dude. Yeah, I threw, you know, one thing you'll get on here that maybe you didn't get on the old website is, you know, I've got lists to all of our playlists. I've got the what you heard episodes, kind of sectioned out, you know, in their own little category. But yeah, no filler podcast.com. And then follow us on Instagram too. So, you know, just do all these things. We're telling you to do, please. Instagram.com, you know the website.

Look for us. You'll find us on there to search No Feeler Podcast and follow us on Instagram. And that's that. So, yeah, we're going to have, I think we're going to have. Let's do Brother Sport. Brother Sport. Yeah, so Brother Sport's going to close us out. This was a single on the record, but it's just a fun song.

It's a great way to end the show. Next week, we'll come at you with Man Man. That's going to be a fun show. You never heard anything like him. That's for me. I can't wait. So come back next week and we'll talk to you then. My name is Travis.

And I'm Quentin. See y'all next week. Open up your, open up your throat And let all of that time, all of that time, all of that time go. I know it sucks to daddy's dome. I try to think of what you want. You've got to open up your, open up your throat. Man!

Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline. It's good to know just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.