Animal Collective

In the eager attentiveness of the first few weeks after its release, a friend commented that Animal Collective’s LP, Strawberry Jam, sounded “tribal – the rhythms and vocal shenanigans.” “It sounds like childhood,” I said. “But it’s also terrifying,” he said. “Like childhood.”

With Animal Collective one is, if taken to write about them, confronted with describing the largely indescribable. To do so would be not only rude but laborious and embarrassing. They play songs. Verses and choruses? Jam is distinct from its predecessors in this respect. More than before and most similar to Sung Tongs, there is an apparent structure to the music. This could be because the compositions are not very long, none topping seven minutes. Sure, it could be said that all of the band’s releases sound alike. And E.E. Cummings poems are all similar, too.

Not often light on melody Jam is no exception to the canon. Is this sweetness the title’s inspiration? The melodies sound as though summoned from long hours of tireless singing and howling, searching. A delayed urgency pervades the atmosphere, an idiosyncrasy of the band. Guitar chords stutter and echo, percussion boom boom booms, keyboard hurriedly follows along. Like Sigur Ros or 2001: A Space Odyssey, part of the enjoyment is being wholly confused as to where this is coming from. (We do know, loosely, where it is going: forward.) What does it sound like? I don’t know. Sometimes a circus, twinkling keys and loopy falsetto “Oooh’s” and ‘Ahhh’s.” It is mystical but also grounded; creepy and assuring. “That blood in the dark/ Will attract the sharks/ Who are not violent/ We all have hungry bellies,” croons “Unsolved Mysteries,” a song that ends on the mantra “Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper…”

What is so rewarding and interesting about this band is how crafted they make improvised music sound. Or how improvised the crafted. I’m sure I don’t know. Caring for a one, two or three chord progression, almost always finding something there, and then making it become something other by its own momentum – instead of key changes or a distortion pedal – Animal Collective have made Jam into perhaps their most accessible release. It’s still plenty strange, but also relentlessly catchy. Unless one finds their entire sound uninteresting the LP rarely pushes towards the patience sometimes required for past releases such as Here Comes the Indian or Spirit They’ve Gone. Which is not to say Jam is more or less of an accomplishment.

“Just a few things are related to the old times,” notes opener “Peacebone,” “When we did believe in magic and we didn’t die.” Timothy White wrote of the Beach Boys as possessing a ‘belief – that there was a purity of purpose in the honest expression of pleasurable needs – which made them exhilarating, moving, and universal.’ This can be applied, too, I think, to Animal Collective, determined to find an invigorating (dare I say “fun?”) way to assemble what they’d like to hear. “Peacebone got found in a dinosaur wing.” Is this Peacebone akin to the Wishbone? What is the wish? “I only want the time” intones “Chores,” “To do one thing I like/ I want to get so stoked/ And take a walk out in the light drizzle/ At the end of the day/ When there’s no one watching.”

The most aloof Jam gets is “#1,” with its horror-show organ rapidly descending a chord, incessant and eerie, captivating. It is scary. And comforting, elusive and manifest. And silly. Who could win a rabbit?

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