January 6th, 2009… the day the indie music scene stood still?  Well… not quite.

Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion has been the most hyped album since 1985’s The Wrestling Album put out by the then WWF (now WWE, friggin Panda Bears be trippin!), which features such hits as Junk Yard Dog’s “Grab Them Cakes” (who was clearly ahead of his time since I think I saw a similarly titled song on Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III)

But, I digress… this album has already been hailed as 2009’s “Album of the Year”, after Pitchfork (whores!) gave them a glarring 9.6/10.  However, I wasn’t buying the hype just yet.  Immediately I chalked this up to Radiohead Syndrome (a term I coined thanks to Pitchfork’s trend of rating everything Radiohead does a 9.0-10.0, likely without even listening to the album - not that they’re not warranted).

So immediately, it should be noted this album is slightly poppier than 2007’s Strawberry Jam, which also received critical acclaim across the board (and right fully so, it was solid… but let’s not start fucking each others bums over it).  Given that, it still has the kind of original sound you come to expect from Animal Collective.

By far the best song on the track in my opinion is “My Girls“.  I think it’s the first single on the album, I’m just too lazy to check, but if it isn’t, it should have been.  I don’t even know what “adobe slabs” are, but I want them too! BAD!  The word have meaning, which is rare from Animal Collective who are usually spewing strings or words that can barely be considered English (barely even Engrish!).  ”Summertime Clothes” reminds me a lot of No Age’s “Things I Did When I Was Dead” from 2008’s Nouns (but in an okay way… like touching non-bathing-suit covered parts, you know?)

I’ll be the first to admit, I wanted to hate this album.  I wanted to listen to it and go “Pitchfork you SOB, way to ruin my year”, since you no doubt have to either hear hipsters bash it, or tweens praise it.  But in all honesty, this is a solid piece of work.

Grizzly Bear… your move.