Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

Coming across like a thought experiment imagining an alternate reality in
which Brian Wilson was German and fronted a krautrock band, Animal
Collective were a startlingly original band during the Noughties,
particularly in the context of a decade in which guitar music was largely
in thrall to revivalism and hagiography. Although they are formally just a
side-project for a bunch of individual Baltimore-based musicians –
numbering David Portner (Avey Tare), Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), Josh Dibb
(Deakin) and Brian Weitz (Geologist) – their eighth album Merriweather Post
Pavilion, released in the first days of 2009, completed the narrative arc
that established them as the most important act in alternative music, a
Radiohead for their decade.