Animal Collective – My Girls

They’ve been beloved by the internet community and various pockets of industry insiders for years now, but it’s only with this year’s magnificent ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ that Animal Collective have had their first chance at real, crossover success. Hoping to capitalise on the rave reviews and unprecedented (for a band as experimental as Animal Collective) attention surrounding the album, Domino Records have selected “My Girls” as a single to try and sell their unique sound to the masses.
Well, “My Girls” is, if nothing else, an incredible piece of music. Building up from a simple synth arpeggio, the track slowly gains momentum over its almost six-minute run-time as Panda Bear’s ecstatic vocals leap into the stratosphere and the band’s trademark tribal percussion ratchets up the tempo. And there’s that instantly memorable chorus: “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things / Like my social status / I just want four walls and adobe slabs / For my girls”. Honestly, when was the first time you heard something of such unadorned love and passion in a song? It’s a universal sentiment, but this expression of familial love and rejecting the rat race is, in 2009, powerful belong reckoning. It’s here that the real genius of not just this song, but its parent album also, lies: the music treads a fine line between Beach Boys melodocism and avant-garde electronic experimentation, but the thing that makes it such a compelling reason is the great beating heart at the core of the album – there’s not been any music so nakedly human and humane in years. Whether Animal Collective continue to be a cult concern or whether they’re destined to hit the big leagues by the year’s end, there’s very little chance that there’ll be another song as powerful and jubilant as “My Girls”.

Review by Mark Corcoran-Lettice