Merriweather Post Pavilion is the eighth studio album by American experimental pop group Animal Collective, released in January 2009 on Domino Records. It peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 and No. 2 on the US Top Independent Albums charts. According to review aggregate site Metacritic, Merriweather was the most critically acclaimed album of 2009, and went on to sell a total of 200,000 copies. It spawned the singles "My Girls" (named the Best Song of 2009 by Pitchfork and Slant Magazine), "Summertime Clothes", and "Brother Sport". The album is named after the Columbia, Maryland venue, Merriweather Post Pavilion. A plan to perform at Merriweather Post Pavilion after the album's release in 2009 was ultimately discarded, though the band eventually did perform there on July 9, 2011. After recording Strawberry Jam in January 2007, guitarist Deakin (Josh Dibb) decided he would take time off from the group for undisclosed personal reasons. As a result, the group went about writing a new batch of songs to be played without guitar. Drawing inspiration from Panda Bear's Person Pitch, the band used samplers as its primary instruments. The group debuted nine of these songs, most of which would later appear on the album, in May 2007 and toured with them through 2008. Read more on Last.fm.