Album Review

Since last year’s release of “Strawberry Jam,” Animal Collective has released an EP and recorded a not-yet-released album of new material. So it might seem a little out-of-step for me to be discussing a record the industrious quartet has already left in their dust. But it’s so darn good. I just can’t stop listening to the goodness!

The album’s first track, “Peacebone” flutters and bounces like a Tokyo video game parlor in the bed of an old Ford pickup truck. Avey Tare’s almost-too-sweet vocals drive the tune, but the dense sampling and myriad noises fill out a musical space that is both frightening (note the roaring monster sound) and pleasing to the ear.

This is followed by “Unsolved Mysteries,” a song that gets back to the Collective’s freak-folk roots and taps the carnival-style errata Tom Waits has made a career of. The slow-morphing “Chores” is the first song on the album that shows off the group’s interest in repetition as a musical device.

“For Reverend Green” is one of the finest tracks here. Its slow build-up of layers of sound, repeated themes followed by sudden changes, and good old-fashioned hollering are exemplary of the Collective’s overall sound.

You can begin to count out the Collective’s musical influences as hints of the late-sixties Beach Boys, German experimentalists Neu!, and the gospel quality of The Velvet Underground bubble up to the surface. This heady mix is especially evident on tracks like “Fireworks,” a nearly-seven-minute sing-along that manages to remind listeners of a hundred of their favorite songs, but still sounds authentically new.

“#1” was a song I skipped over several times when I first picked up “Strawberry Jam.” It is a weird, slow song featuring two vocal tracks: an incomprehensibly slippery deep voice and another of a high, lilting quality. This spooky dialogue travels along the kind of synthesizer parkway where Tangerine Dream owns a ranch house. But after a few listens, all this goofiness starts to sound a whole lot cooler than, say, the fact that Metallica is still recording albums.

“Winter Wonder Land” and “Cuckoo Cuckoo” are both standout tracks here, not only because they continue the experimental-noise-meets-a-melody gestalt of the rest of the record, but because they add to that mix an element of rock.

Finally, the album rounds out with “Derek,” a sing-song and stripped-down tune that seems for the first couple of minutes to not be going anywhere special. Then the patty-cake rhythm of a pounding schoolyard rhyme changes everything.

Throughout, the album stays at the cutting edge of what modern pop music can do. For all its sampling, reliance on effects and use of synthesizers, each song on “Strawberry Jam” has an organic, earthy sound that invites even the most resistant listener along for the ride. And for those of you ready for some noise, Animal Collective’s got plenty to go around.