– Strawberry Jam

The whining and droning circus noises pierce your eardrums.

	September 3rd, 2007

At first you get a flashback to when cassette tapes (yes, cassette tapes) would burn out and make all sorts of crazy noises in your tape deck. That’s how Animal Collective’s “Strawberry Jam” starts. Then you hear someone say, “Bump it” and it all comes together. The New York based experimental band’s newest album is like a chunk of sound waves from space, warped and distorted so humans may understand just what these guys are getting at. Tracks like “#1” comes in with a repeating synth, almost like a frequency from a spaceship hovering over your house. The dreamlike synth gives way to Avey Tare’s vocals that have been slowed down to a molasses like level of intensity that can only be compared to Tim Curry on mescaline. Your starting to get an idea of what this band is like. Next you’re staring at things for too long, lost in deep thought because you’re trapped in this amazing chorus from the track “For Reverend Greene,” which is this album’s quintessential masterpiece. The song alludes to this building point and the words “it’s alright to feel inhuman now” are spoken, which pulls the whole thing together and makes “Strawberry Jam” a truly unforgettable addition to this band’s already amazing library. The album does tread on the land of childhood rhymes and overall monotony in songs like “Derek,” which the tempo would be more at home on Sesame Street. But, that shouldn’t suggest that this isn’t an amazing album. “Strawberry Jam” is probably any synth junkie’s choice of preservative.

By Nathan Solis

Listen to the album at Amazon.com