Animal Collective Strawberry Jam by: Al Cottrill Tue:28-Aug-07 Label: Domino Year: 2007 WB rating 88 out of 100

Animal Collective have always been an inscrutable band. Despite being held up by the indie community as arbiters of good music, their sound is far from mass consumer friendly, due mostly to their disdain for conventional song structure and sound. While they may not garner the same level of sales or audience as Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes or Surfjan Stevens, they are happily mentioned in the same breath by anyone describing indie high-art. While they don’t necessarily belong on a second tier, they will probably remain there. At least until radios play Strawberry Jam.

That sentence might worry the purists. Those who could previously navigate the experimental and uneasy waves of Animal Collective’s music to the heart-warming melodies and blissful wash of sound contained within found heaven. Many would happily cite them as a favourite band. These listeners had something that was not available to everyone; a reward that sometimes took work; a band that not everyone knew about with an art school aesthetic that warranted suspicion from most. The only thing the purists have to worry about is losing their niche band to a wider audience. Strawberry Jam has retained everything that made Animal Collective so endearing in the first place, and in doing so they have come closer again to perfecting their sound, importantly sounding natural rather than ingratiating.

Instead, Strawberry Jam is a distillation and concentration of previous work, which alone should suggest the power of its charms. Dosing up the sugar, Animal Collective have relied much upon electronic augmentation rather than traditional instrumentation. While this has always been a feature, here it is more prevalent, and the result is a thick, potent sound that retains enough lightness to avoid surfeit. The clattering wall of sound and cymbals are blended with animal calls amongst the keyboards and vocals to create a shimmering pastiche of noise (one that you feel would never have existed without Brian Wilson). The opening bars of ‘Peacebone’ should lay to final rest anyone’s concerns that the band have sold out, its jumbled computer bleeps (enough to stop the mainstream listener in their tracks) slowly giving way to a melody built from vocalist Avey Tare’s nonsense vocals. Despite the unusual sound, this pristine slice of exuberant pop is immediately endearing – but that should be no surprise. Meanwhile, with Strawberry Jam, Animal Collective have actually flirted with convention, in the structural and production sense rather than aural content. The songs are rich, textured and layered to the nines, but the vocals are forward in the mix, and there is normally a drumbeat kicking the songs along. While the final sound is far from ordinary (courtesy of the filtered vocals and synthesisers, and overall weirdness), when unravelled a structure akin to conventional composition is apparent, something less so in Feels and Sung Tongs. Again, the result is a distillation of Animal Collective’s charms into a more palatable, and more potent, form.

The conceptual twins, ‘For Reverend Green’ and ‘Fireworks’ are two sides of the same beautiful coin, each over six minutes long, they are the albums peak achievement. ‘Fireworks’ is the more up-tempo, the jittery marching beat a perfect accompaniment to Avey Tare’s urging voice, and then would-be chorus’ filtered ‘doo oo’ vocals. Musically, it is condensed elation, happy to dissolve into dense electronic arrangements, and emerge floating vocals out and above. The lyrics are as usual impenetrable, although obviously depressed, with an elusive solipsistic theme “but golden lips and Allman vibe/make me feel that I’m only all I see sometimes”. The tense ‘For Reverend Green’ also deals with conflicted happiness, the vocals falling and rising on a chugging bass, intermittently yelping before Animal Collective grab the song by the scruff and punch it home in a wall of sound. Both are achievements in themselves, able to make their extended duration a non-event, maintaining the excitement and inspiration for this period without lapse. Amongst other successes – the playful ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ and ‘Chores’ wash of sound (also very similar to Panda Bear's Person Pitch) – ‘Winter Wonderland’ is the obvious highlight. The racing vocals and infectious melody could teach Architecture In Helsinki a thing or two about making music that is spontaneously danceable minus contrivance.

There is no doubt that Strawberry Jam is a more ambitious effort than predecessor Feels, although still closer in content to that than the previous Sung Tongs. While it is more conventional, this only has to do with the presence of a near-unifying aural theme across songs and a familiar production aesthetic. Rather than flitting from one jam to the next, as a textured whole it is harmonious. The collage of traditional instruments, electronics and organic noises, combined with filters and delay pedals create an atmosphere of pure pop music, albeit one that has had its acetate melted, warped, stretched and skewed before being surreptitiously returned. Somehow, despite the violence inflicted upon this sound, the result is a pop masterpiece.