September 19, 2007

Animal Collective
Strawberry Jam

Pat Smith | contributing columnist
psmith4@smcvt.edu

With a national television debut set for Oct. 5 on the home of indie television debuts, “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” Animal Collective will venture towards a larger audience. Already this year one of its members, Panda Bear’s solo release Person Pitch was critically well-received and in its place, moderately successful. Strawberry Jam is Animal Collective’s follow-up to 2005’s Feels and moves in a direction suited for such a debut. 

Where Feels was content to be as peaceful and light as can be, with a beautifully calm drift to the sound, Strawberry Jam takes the opposite approach. That’s not to say that Animal Collective has drifted away from its distinctive sound, it still sounds like children’s music as rewritten by people intent on causing confusion, and potentially long-term anxiety in any child who listens too often at too young of an age. From the opening track, Animal Collective brings a bouncier energy, with an unrelenting beat overrun by the near-falsetto of lead singer Avey Tare and whatever electronic tears and beeps that are fitted into the song.

This structure beneath the apparent unmitigated weirdness and chaos is perhaps the most compelling thing about Animal Collective, particularly on Strawberry Jam. Nearly every track has a consistency that can be tracked throughout, regardless of what is happening in the rest of the song. From song to song, there is a varying degree of this connectedness: “For Reverend Green” electronically drifts right into the next track “Fireworks.”  

“Chores” is a track that seems mired in chaos, a song completely torn apart and left in shards for the listener to make sense of, yet behind this mess, there is a consistency (itself weird, yes, but nevertheless, something to hold to). This time, the pace is an electronic whooping that stays together as the song loops and frantically changes pace, speeding up and then stretching with an elasticity that threatens to drag the song into nothingness. This track is representative of what happens in varying degrees throughout Strawberry Jam.   

In an age of remixes and mashups, it’s as if Animal Collective has already done the work. Somewhere within each track is an easily recognizable song, which is then played with and toyed with until it takes on the distinct Animal Collective weirdness. Here, the influence of Panda Bear’s solo release is most evident -  the beeps, popping bubbles, and waves of electronica that carry over where there was once a traditional song structure. “For Reverend Green” is an offering that could easily be mistaken for a straightforward indie rock song until the vocals kick in, but even then, the screeches and yells sound like Tare’s take on a classic rock yell. In other words, beneath the play of weirdness, Animal Collective writes really good songs.

This normality beneath strange is compelling enough to bring in new, patient listeners and “For Reverend Green” and “Fireworks” make Strawberry Jam an excellent starting point. When “Fireworks” breaks into electronic play, a link to the song can be heard. The break midway through, a rising sound somewhere between bird calls and exploding fireworks hints that some of the other weirdness throughout Animal Collective’s work is not entirely unrelated to the basic song. Other songs have soothing melodies, relaxing piano play or dreamy electronic waves. Once found, this normality can always be found again, but it won’t hold consistently.     

That feeling of things almost making total sense is particularly strong when Tare’s lyrics come into play. His vocals take on a bizarre, twisted, high-pitched facsimile of Frank Sinatra. Words are pronounced in unexpected ways, his inflections and emphases are unpredictable. A falsetto can come at any moment. Singing along is an endeavor best forgotten. Besides, it is unlikely you could really know what it was you were singing.

With some writers, the lyrics don’t seem to make any sense and there’s no point in trying to understand. With Tare, there’s the feeling that the lyrics make total sense to him, and the audience is just missing something. On “Unsolved Mysteries,” he tells us “that blood in the dark will attract the sharks who are not violent, we’ve all got hungry battles.” It’s as if all you need is to give him the chance to fill in the blanks - the gaps his mind jumped, and it would make sense. The music itself is like this, ephemeral and nothing to hold on tightly to, but snatches that can be pulled out of the air and momentarily held. Or, as Avey sings on “Cuckoo Cuckoo”: “I can’t hold what’s in my hand.”