Releasing albums as frequently as Animal Collective — eight studio albums and three EPs since their inception in 2000 — usually strains a band's creative process, but these Baltimore avant-garde rockers keep imaginative and innovative records coming, especially with their latest Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Named after a concert venue in Columbia, Md., Merriweather is a step in a different direction for a band that doesn't like to stick in one genre for long.

Animal Collective, an unceasingly dynamic band, removed its freak-folk label for psychedelic pop with 2007's Strawberry Jam.

Strawberry Jam experimented with different electronic sounds and harsher vocals, creating catchy highs and abrasive lows. Merriweather's hooks aren't as catchy as Strawberry Jam, but it's a softer, smoother, rounder album.

From the onset, the album is stuck in time with the dreamlike track "In the Flowers," which starts drearily, sounds floating, until the song finds its rhythm and picks up, looking for a way to be liberated. "If I could just leave my body for the night."

Merriweather's dreamy tone filters throughout the album with tracks like "Also Frightened" ("Will it just be like they're dreaming?/Will it just be like I'm dreaming") and "Bluish" ("Pulling me into another dream/A lucid dream"). The album art, an optical illusion, enhances this dreamy feeling, showing that nothing is as it seems.

There's also a strong sense of being set free throughout the record. In "Daily Routine," a person struggles through his daily life in a wheelchair, taking longer to get up from bed and hoping his chair will function properly for he is useless without it. There's also a hint of wanting to be freed of something that gives people incredible independence, the automobile. "Guard my girl from the muffler's black gas."

As original as the album sounds, traces of afro-pop harmonies filter in through the cracks. "Summertime Clothes" and "Brother Sport," the record's more compelling tracks, sound like something Vampire Weekend would record if it went through an electronic phase.

The problem with Merriweather — it might not be a problem at all — is that there aren't any songs that stick out. On Strawberry Jam, "Peacebone" and "Fireworks" are so catchy that it entices the listener to hear the rest of the album. On Merriweather, "My Girls," "Summertime Clothes" and "Brother Sport" come the closest to hooking listeners, but none stands out on the album.

Actually one of the strengths of the record might be that Merriweather has to be listened to in its entirety for listeners to have the best experience. And since it's an album without a lot of catchy hooks, there's a small chance it'll grow tiresome.