Merriweather Post Pavilion is the eighth studio album by American experimental pop group Animal Collective, released on January 6, 2009, through Domino Records.

The group recorded the album as a trio featuring members Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz), with co-production by Ben H. Allen.

Merriweather Post Pavilion saw the band continue to explore the electronica-based sound of their previous album Strawberry Jam, but favours a lusher, multi-layered production style compared to its predecessor.

Drawing sonically from Panda Bear's 2007 solo album Person Pitch, and working largely without guitars, the band made extensive use of samplers and synthesizers as primary instruments, as well as prominent reverb.

[9] After recording Strawberry Jam in January 2007, guitarist Deakin (Josh Dibb) decided he would take time off from the group for undisclosed personal reasons.

In an interview with the Baltimore City Paper, Allen stated that the band chose him due to "my work with Gnarls Barkley, and wanted my low-end expertise".

[10] According to band-member Brian Weitz, while "[t]hat was the original attraction", Animal Collective was also impressed by his eclectic music tastes, "[h]e seemed to be somebody that technically knew how to work in [urban hip-hop], but was open-minded to other styles as well... knowing that he'd been involved in a lot of the Bad Boy Records stuff from the '90s was exciting to us".

"[11] The group also used synthesizers such as the Roland SH2 and Novation Bass Station (for bassier sounds) and Juno 60 (for higher melodic lines and arpeggiated parts).

[...] A lot of times, with the piano and acoustic guitar stuff, we would run it through the H3000 and create a pitched‑up and a pitched‑down version and mix it back in so it'd have an otherworldly sort of feel.

[11] On Merriweather Post Pavilion, the band wanted to capture a live sound on record, just as it intended to on Strawberry Jam.

See how, as you try to focus on any one part of the tessellated pattern, the sections in the periphery of your vision shift and undulate, almost alive, making it impossible to pin the image down in your mind?"

The artwork features an example of illusory motion, a type of optical illusion which is based on the works of Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

The track was subsequently posted on many blogs, including Pitchfork, but was later removed virtually everywhere by the international internet policing company Web Sheriff.

[25] Peaking at number 13 on the United States Billboard 200,[26] by 2012 the album had sold over 199,000 copies, more than twice as many as the group's previous top-seller, Strawberry Jam.

[44] By contrast, Andy Beta of Spin praised the album's "startling, pounding, effulgencegent sonic template" for combining many of the group's previous touchstones, including harmonic Beach Boys pop, African tribal chants, minimal techno, psychedelia, and dub.

Club's Andy Battaglia called the album a "summation and an expansion of everything Animal Collective has done so far, with a sharper focus on melody and more emboldened vocals that drive the songs.

[47] Margaret Wappler of The LA Times stated that the album "shines a light" into the group's "subterranean world of labyrinthine freakadelia, [...] dispens[ing] with most of their creepy vocal tics" in favor of "breezy harmonies.