Review: Animal Collective at the State Theatre, St. Pete

The sunshine dreams of Brian Wilson as remixed by Pablo Picasso. Or maybe: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir directed by the HAL 9000. Or how about this one: ringing Vegas slot machines as programmed by Timothy Leary. Yeah, that might do it.

You could spend great chunks of time, and a whole lotta drugs, trying to describe the deconstructed pop puzzles of Animal Collective, the Baltimore-based sound artists that have become the It Indie Band of 2009. They are restless, roving spirits -- definitely not radio ready. And yet they are hugely popular, hugely beloved, especially by the 705 fans at a sold-out and sparkling State Theatre on Monday.

Animal Collective -- sampler and sequencer Brian "Geologist" Weitz, singer/guitarist/spaz David "Avey Tare" Portner and singer/beatmaker Noah "Panda Bear" Lennox (pictured) -- is touring behind its eighth album, the newish Merriweather Post Pavilion, a titular nod to the Frank Gehry-designed concert venue in the planned prefab community of Columbia, Md. It's a brilliant concept album: an examination of suburban responsibility (the musicians are husbands, fathers) through fractured, but ultimately harmonious, pieces.

These guys make Radiohead look as grounded as the Stones, and yet in many ways, the good-natured AC is more accessible than Thom Yorke's mercurial crew. They blend the natural (guitar licks, real banging drums, angelic harmonies, quasi-yodeling) with blinking, bleeping electronic equipment that looks swiped from the the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. The ACers are also incurable romantics -- you just need to know where to listen.