You guys aren’t really going to leave this up here, are you?” asks Avey Tare (born David Portner), scanning the eight nails he has just hammered through Rebecca Romijn’s head. A few feet away, his Animal Collective bandmate Geologist (Brian Weitz) sprays “Also Frightened?,” an ominous song title from their new album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, in deep red across an office door. Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), the third member, tacks Tilda Swinton’s head to the end of a painted fish spine.

The New York darlings are the latest members in a club of chosen bands -- TV On The Radio and Radiohead, among others -- that explore the outer limits of song and sound but remain on the grid of accessibility. And never is this more apparent than on Merriweather, which sounds like a flawlessly curated museum stacked with artifacts gathered from their sonic expeditions. “All the songs kind of felt like different weather patterns. Right before we went into the studio we said, Let’s think of each song like a weather pattern. We’ve got hurricanes, tornadoes, sandstorms, a tidal wave and a tsunami,” says Tare. When commissioned to perform artistic shock therapy on the walls of BlackBook’s offices using back issues and assorted detritus, no one knew what the forecast called for. “We made a wall of blue, a death wall and a mirror wall,” says Tare, admiring the organized chaos. “The piece is compartmentalized, but it’s a bit like a rainbow.”

Photography by Victoria Will.