Ever read an album review of your 14th favorite band online and thought “Whoever wrote this is a flaming pile of monkey turds. I could burp out a better review than this.’ Well burp away, my friends. Or in more technical terms…

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album to stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet us whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. So without further adieu, we give you… Tweet Release.

So not only do we have this sweet announcement that puts you fine folks in control (well, as much control as you can establish in 140 characters), but we’ve got the new project from Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) and Collection of Colonies of Bees, Volcano Choir’s Unmap, to stream, just released today. Here’s the stream and here’s our Twitter in case you forgot. Now listen to the album and start tweet-tweeting.

After seeing The Whip at last year’s SXSW I was extremely interested in hearing their studio album. As a live band they were awesome — my favorite new act of the whole week. Their sensational mix of crunchy French underground electronica, 80s new-wave and brit-pop made for a high-energy show that turned the concrete concert venue in to an off the hook sweaty dance party. I had to see if this energy would translate to their album.

From the first listen of X Marks Destination, it becomes quite obvious that The Whip are pros at getting a party started and fueling it to the late hours of the night. This album is basically a hipsters wet dream. It’s chock full of raw industrial Justice-like electronica tracks that are heavy on crunchy bass lines and catchy two line choruses that are looped continuously through out the songs. “Trashed” and “Throw it in the Fire” are the best examples of this raw dance rock blend. Both feature minimalist hook laced choruses that are worthy of a packed dance floor chanting the lyrics at the top of their lungs. In “Trashed” lead singer Danny Seville sings “I wanna.. I wanna be trashed..” over a big fat grimy beat. How can you not to want drunkenly chant this chorus?

On “Blackout” they add a funky bass line and some looped bell chimes to their dance mix creating one of the more accessible and fun dance tracks. Even the lyrics are more playful with Seville chanting “Blackout, Blackout, We’re waiting for a Blackout!” It’s a tuneful dance track that is irresistible and probably the best on the album.

What I didn’t expect were a couple of 80s new-wave pop songs that really showed a more melodic side of the band. On “Frustration” and “Sirens” The Whip pulls out their best Cure impressions and craft two excellent synth- heavy new wave gems that mesh perfectly into the beat heavy dance album.

X Marks Destination is a perfect party album that plays like a kick ass DJ set effortlessly transitioning between a mix of killer electronica and 80s new wave. Justice and Simian Mobile Disco better watch out because The Whip is a double threat equipped with both the big beats and melodious pop songs to get the party started!

Razor & Tie

Merriweather Post Pavillion is such a colossal success that I find myself simultaneously overwhelmed and at a loss for words. I can’t separate the visceral from the critical: This album is awesome, incredible, awe-inspiring, phenomenal, breathtaking. I’m trying to articulate the integral beauty of “My Girls”, yet all that comes to mind are synonyms for unprecedented and astonishing. The process of “reviewing” each song feels wrong, diametrically opposed to the positive spirit that the album espouses. When a release is this good, why bother deconstructing each harmony or intention? How can I possibly describe Animal Collective’s perfected aesthetic?

Derek (Editor of The Tripwire) insists on being critical and balanced, but I somehow can’t — I listen to this album incessantly as I lay at home nursing my two-week old bronchitis, yet still feel an irrepressible surge of jubilation. Merriweather is a contagious celebration of daily life and the mundane — it is impossible not to feel apart of the optimism.

Beginning with “In the Flowers”, Dave Portner’s (aka Avey Tare) airy wondering and light guitar-plucking overlay hand-claps and a relentless air of anticipation until it hits at 2:30: “If I could just leave my body for a while.” We have now been launched into a musical stratosphere of exhilaration and vigor and confusion. We will not leave this area for roughly the next 55 minutes. In comes the shiny-pop “My Girls”, where Person Pitch and the token AC sound meet, which will tempt the remix urges of DJs and producers alike. Deep bass commences “Also Frightened”, where the vocals of Avey Tare and Noax Lennox (aka Panda Bear) weave into another until they finally ask: “Are you also frightened?” So in the opening three tracks, we hear psychedelia, 80s-style pop, Afro-beats, dub and folk. A musical kaleidoscope, indeed.

The idea of “accessibility” lies at the crux of the AC debate and Merriweather will be the album that transcends this criteria. The raspy yelps of Avey Tare are nearly forgotten and idle ambient tracks that characterized older AC are eschewed. Though far from “conventional”, this album sees the band appropriating their signature sound while including new ideas and nuances. Look no further than “No More Runnin’”, the bedroom soul ballad (yes, an AC ballad) promoting the stunning vocalization of its lead singers. Or the sing-a-long summer anthem “Brothersport”, fusing Brian Wilson’s tropics with AC neurosis.

The lyricism on the album conveys an older band, yet one no less excitable. Themes of partnership and family preside over these tracks accompanied by an acute sense of self-awareness: “There isn’t much that I feel I need/ A solid soul and the blood I bleed.” They’re not trying for the abstract or the oblique, they’re singing of what they know. On “Summertime Clothes”, the line “I want to walk around with you” sounds so sincere and familiar that it verges on the profound. On “No More Runnin’”, the promise is full-fledged relational commitment, and the harmonies of the chorus are perhaps the album’s most humbling and awing moment. “I really want to show my girl that I need her,” sings Lennox, the lyric serving as a microcosm for the entire album.

Animal Collective never had anything to prove. A group of avant-garde musicians from Baltimore playing “freak-folk” or “psych-folk” (or whatever you want to call it) never seem destined for international greatness. The music was too esoteric, too abrasive, and too inaccessible for the mainstream, let alone an expansive fan base. Sure, critical acclaim within a particular niche was achieved through a variety of different sounds and albums. Merriweather transgresses all of these sounds and arrives at a sort of middle ground. A little less anxious, a little more plain-spoken, this release will reach a wider audience than any other. Ultimately, for all Animal Collective fans, Merriweather Post Pavilion is a gracious and generous offering, a culmination of a fantastic career that will deservingly send this band into greater acclaim.

Domino Records