Bears and Bullets: Bears and Bullets Top Ten Albums of the Decade

#5: Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective

Many people would regard Merriweather Post Pavilion as some kind of unprecedented sonic adventure. While that is true, Animal Collective, during the span of their career, have traversed these sonic exploits before. What they haven't done, prior to MPP, was create an accessible album that translates their other-worldly innovations on such a profound and scoping scale.

The natural theme for music in the decade was not artists compromising and difficult experimentations with their work, but bringing it to collective whole. No other artist did this progressively better than Animal Collective. Take 2004's Sun Tongs and 2005's Feels. Both immeasurably brilliant and avant-guard works are essentials in the Animal Collective library, and each were iconic stepping-stones towards 2007's Strawberry Jam. Each record preceding MPP, for all their acclaim, can't wrench a listener in on such unprecedented levels, but chronologically, it's a perfect time-table. "In the Flowers," "Summertime Clothes" and "Brother Sport" are far from casual pop precipices for the band, but here it just sounds too easy.

Five years removed from their landmark Sun Tongs (and several anarchic album before that), Animal Collective have become one of the most unlikely stars of the indie universe. If you don't think so, go back to 2004 and ask yourself the same question.

Animal Collective - My Girls