You Ever Hear of This Band Called “Animal Collective?”

“When I was a teen, the band [that introduced a new aesthetic for 'indie'] was Pavement. In the late ’90s/turn of the century, it was Radiohead. In the late ’00s, it’s undoubtedly Animal Collective.”

“[T]hey’re arguably THE indie rock band of this decade, the one group who legitimately brought in a new aesthetic for what we know as indie rock, and they do not rock at all, and they rarely play guitars. If you go back to the late ’90s, people were really angsty about guitars, and how they were inevitably at the center of indie music. And now we’re ten years later, and that audience is now totally in thrall of an album that is almost entirely keyboards, samples, drum machines and harmonized vocals…

I think they should go play Bonnaroo. Once they nail down that audience, they can play anywhere they want. Including the Merriweather Post Pavilion. ”

…Matthew, in conversation with The Fader re: “Is Animal Collective The Great Band Of Our Time?” (a series in two parts).

Elsewhere, the voice of the alt-youth nation, Hipster Runoff, doles out an eight-hundred thousand word treatise on the subject.

And elsewhere beyond, consensus seems to grow daily about Merriweather‘s “greatness”– in our AC/Merriweather discussion thread, I think there were only maybe 2 people who had dissenting opinions.

- Ryan Catbird