Merriweather Post Pavilion is the ninth studio album from Animal Collective, recorded with Ben Allen in Oxford, Mississippi. Located in different continents, Animal Collective is an umbrella name used for a grouping of four people: Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Deakin (who is absent from this record) and Geologist.

Whilst doing a little background reading on Animal Collective I came across the following sentence that was designed to sum their music up: "their grasp of pop hooks and dynamics counterbalanced by a love of noise/friction and musical anarchy; their songs wavering on the tightrope between deeply affecting beauty and unrestrained chaos."

Well, they certainly got it right about noise and chaos! This is a mishmash of noise, certainly not enjoyable to my ears. The vocals are whiny, monotonous and to be honest too weak. There doesn’t seem to be any passion behind the voice whatsoever.

As for the music itself, there is just too much going on in the tracks. I can see what they are trying to do, take the genre of pop as a basis and try to move in a different direction with it. Unfortunately, for me, this just does not work, there is too much sonic in each track and it sounds messy.

The one song on this album I thought was okay was track 6, ‘Bluish’. It has a good background for the chorus but that was about the only bit I did like.

This album is like a psychedelic nightmare; it’s just a shame I couldn’t wake up before it ended.

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Helena Rea