AC February: Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

I hate my book club. Its just a bunch of pretentious law students sitting around complaining that the featured author is too pretentious and making up a bunch of gibberish about the deeper meaning of a book the majority of us did not enjoy. For example, our latest book (The Sea, by John Banville – I don’t recommend it) featured an 11 year old girl and her mute twin brother. Our club decided that the twin brother did not actually exist and spent a half hour discussing the implications of this genius interpretation until they finally decided that the twin did exist after all. Then they moved on to a discussion about how the twin’s existence fully explained his family’s eccentricities, followed by an exploration of whether another character, the Colonel – who, it was unanimously decided, was not really a colonel – existed or not. He did. All the while, I sat quietly munching on cheese and crackers and weighing in my mind whether or not taking this class was actually worth having one less exam at the end of the school year. It is.

Perhaps all of this wouldn’t be so bad if I actually enjoyed the books we read. This book club seems obsessed with death: The Sea is our second book to feature prominently a drowning suicide, and all of the novels we’ve read have turned on the death of immediate family members; brothers, fathers, wives – no one is safe from Seminars in Ethical Values, Section Seven.

Having decided that better books would make a better book club, I concede that I am not actually opposed to book clubs per se. The idea of getting together and discussing a work of art actually still has some appeal to me, which is how I came up with my latest idea: an Album Club! If a group of readers can form a group to discuss literature, then why can’t music-loves get together and discuss an album. The piratical problem that I immediately foresee is that I don’t actually know anyone who cares as much about music as I do, thereby making it difficult for me to actually form a group who could gather together and discuss an album a month.

Fortunately, we live in an age where actual physical proximity has only secondary importance. I have, therefore, decided to run my album group via this very blog. This is how it will work:

• Each month I will select an album, generally one that is widely accepted as a quality piece of music.
• Anyone who wishes to participate should get a hold of a quality recording of the album and dedicate the time to at least one complete, detailed listen. I’m not talking about putting on the album while you are cooking dinner or anything, I am talking about playing the music on as high of quality device as you have and giving the full album your complete attention.
• At the end of the month, I will write a new post giving my impression of the album and choosing a new album for the next session. I invite anyone and everyone to add your own comments to the post. (Another benefit of this method is that even if no one joins my club, I can will still listen to a new, complex piece of music each month)

So, lets begin. I figured the perfect album to begin our club is one that has music critics and bloggers all over the country have be vomiting with joy (it was released on Jan 5 and almost universally hailed as the best album of 2009): Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. So, grab your copy (I recommend Amazon.com), give it a listen, and in a month tell us what you think. Personally, I think the first single is great.

UPDATE: If you know of anyone who might be interested in participating in the album club, please let them know and direct them to this post