merriweather post pavilion

I can say with absolute certainty that I've experienced few things more blissful in my life than the Animal Collective performance Wednesday night at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur.  The crowd was so tiny (only 300 tickets were sold) that I easily found my spot right at the stage in front of Panda Bear, and when he started to sing "Comfy in Nautica" I almost cried with the beauty of it.  "Comfy" is not strictly an AC track, I know, being from Panda Bear's solo effort and all, but I'm glad they worked it into their set, which they allowed to stretch on for two hours.  The coastal fog threatened to blanket both band and audience entirely, but I for one barely noticed as I danced joyfully to "Summertime Clothes" and other favorite songs both old and new.  The music never stopped as the band blended outros into intros and transformed them live into complex experimental noisescapes, lulling the audience into a momentary trance until the beats kicked in again.  The Library's pastoral location tucked into the trees on the side of a mountain could not have been a more perfect venue for Animal Collective's music either, and Big Sur itself really is magic.  As close as I live I've spent criminally little time exploring its many charms, but I made sure to do some hiking and noshing during the day Thursday before the dusk-to-dawn tonalism show back at the Library that night, another mind-blower with acts like Windy & Carl and Lyonnais playing alongside DJ sets by Andy Cabic of Vetiver and Geologist of Animal Collective (masquerading as "Obrian System").  It was ambient/drone/noise/space-rock-ariffic.