Music Tuesday: Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion Travels to the Bottom of the Ocean and Back

The new Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post Pavillion, is finally officially available today. We had heard it was great—even one of the best albums of 2009. Now that we've listened, we agree: The most accessible album so far of the Baltimore-born indie rock band is, indeed, fantastic. Writer Nick Sylvester interviewed the group's electronics specialist Brian Weitz for our February 2009 issue (read the profile), then handed over the transcript so we could learn even more about the music pioneers. It turns out the band members are a lot like us—they dive, they love to experience the world, and they think laying on a blanket outside listening to music is hard to beat.  Get a taste of the new album with these YouTube videos of the opening tracks, "In the Flowers," "My Girls," and "Also Frightened."

Interview by Nick Sylvester; Photograph by Ethan Levitas
Photo from left: Brian Weitz, Dave Portner. Noah Lennox, and Josh Dibb

NGA: What is your personal history with the outdoors?
BRIAN WEITZ:  I have been scuba diving since I was 12 years old.  My father’s family is from Savannah, Georgia, and we used to spend the summers down there when I was a kid.  I immediately fell in love with the ocean and spent most of my time chasing minnows in the tide pools.  When I was 12, which, at the time, was the minimum age that one could be scuba certified, my dad offered to sign us both up for the class.  I guess his thinking was that it was an activity we could do together for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately he didn’t like it very much. Our first dive in the ocean was a wall dive off of Turks and Caicos. The wall extended well below any sort of visibility.  We hovered at 100 feet, but the darkness below was a little unnerving even for experienced divers. I think it was a bad choice for a first dive. We’ve been talking recently about going again somewhere mellow, like the Florida Keys, where he could get comfortable in shallow water first.  

I, on the other hand, loved it right away and was immediately hooked. Since then I’ve been diving in Florida, Belize, Tobago, Baja, Monterey, Australia, New Zealand, and a liveaboard to the Revillagigedos Islands off of Mexico.

Continue reading this interview >>

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and a liveaboard to the Revillagigedos Islands off of Mexico

[Barrier Cream]

Hi all

As a keen scuba diver I would say to you not to give in. A wall dropping to over 100 ft is def not a good first dive.

Keep it up

Barrier Cream

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