Strawberry Jam
Animal Collective
Score:86
Reviewer: Al Cottrill
Label: Domino (Worldwide)
Reviewed: Aug 27th '07, Released:2007
Animal Collective have always been an inscrutable band. Despite being held up by the indie community as arbiters of great 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 waters of Animal Collective’s music would rightfully fear a dilution. However, 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.
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 excess. The clattering wall of sound and cymbals are blended with animal calls amongst the keyboards and vocals to create a shimmering pastiche of noise.
Meanwhile, with Strawberry Jam, Animal Collective have actually flirted with convention, in structure and production. The songs are rich and textured but the vocals are forward in the mix, and there is normally a drumbeat kicking the songs along. Again, the result is a distillation of Animal Collective’s charms into a more palatable, and more potent, form.
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.
