2008 Woodie Awards
Animal Collective sound bland on Strawberry Jam
Erin Shea
Issue date: 10/26/07 Section: Entertainment
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10/26/07 - "Animal Collective" and "pop record" are phrases rarely ever uttered in the same sentence... until now.
Animal Collective has produced a pop record.
The band has never exactly been mainstream and its latest release, Strawberry Jam, definitely isn't bubblegum pop. It's dark and highly unusual, but it is still pop.
It has coherent thoughts. It has catchy musical progressions. It can get stuck in your head. And I don't like it one bit.
Fairly stripped down by Animal Collective standards, Strawberry Jam seems content to trade in a lot of the quirks that made previous efforts so addictive for some pop sensibility.
Yes, you read that right. Animal Collective now has "sensibilities." They also have stage names like Panda Bear. Somehow I'm not seeing how these two things fit well.
The sonic rush and unpredictable, insane twists are all but gone on the first half of the album, a collection of offbeat pop songs that, while interesting, can hardly be deemed experimental, which is what Animal Collective is known for.
Regardless, the songs are very well done. The opener, "Peacebone," for example, begins with the evocative lyrics, "A peacebone got found in the dinosaur wing…It was a jugular vein in a juggler's girl/It was supposedly leaking most interesting colors," surrounded by repetitive drumming and high-pitched keyboards.
"For Reverend Green" and "Fireworks," arguably the catchiest songs in the bunch, also play well off one another. Their similarities, like the "woo-oo-oo" backing vocals, link the two songs and allow one to fade into the other with ease, while tonal differences allow the songs to remain clearly separate.
The closer, "Derek," is a sweet song about growing up that is very befitting of this more "mature" outing.
It's also one of the only songs I was genuinely pleased with, as it seemed to be one of the few that could strike a balance between the catchy, folk-pop sound Animal Collective seems to be leaning toward and the quirks and oddities that filled their previous albums.
Other songs still show plenty of the Collective's idiosyncrasies, but many just don't seem to mesh well with the more pop-based elements of the songs.
The penultimate track, "Cuckoo Cuckoo," is a glaring example of this problem, with a beautiful but repetitive piano melody in the background that really doesn't work amidst all the clatter and noise that fills a good portion of the song.
If Strawberry Jam were the work of another band, perhaps this review might have turned out differently, but because it's Animal Collective, the album is a bit of a letdown. They had fun with this record and it shows, but, as a fan, I just can't help but to expect more from them.
Animal Collective has produced a pop record.
The band has never exactly been mainstream and its latest release, Strawberry Jam, definitely isn't bubblegum pop. It's dark and highly unusual, but it is still pop.
It has coherent thoughts. It has catchy musical progressions. It can get stuck in your head. And I don't like it one bit.
Fairly stripped down by Animal Collective standards, Strawberry Jam seems content to trade in a lot of the quirks that made previous efforts so addictive for some pop sensibility.
Yes, you read that right. Animal Collective now has "sensibilities." They also have stage names like Panda Bear. Somehow I'm not seeing how these two things fit well.
The sonic rush and unpredictable, insane twists are all but gone on the first half of the album, a collection of offbeat pop songs that, while interesting, can hardly be deemed experimental, which is what Animal Collective is known for.
Regardless, the songs are very well done. The opener, "Peacebone," for example, begins with the evocative lyrics, "A peacebone got found in the dinosaur wing…It was a jugular vein in a juggler's girl/It was supposedly leaking most interesting colors," surrounded by repetitive drumming and high-pitched keyboards.
"For Reverend Green" and "Fireworks," arguably the catchiest songs in the bunch, also play well off one another. Their similarities, like the "woo-oo-oo" backing vocals, link the two songs and allow one to fade into the other with ease, while tonal differences allow the songs to remain clearly separate.
The closer, "Derek," is a sweet song about growing up that is very befitting of this more "mature" outing.
It's also one of the only songs I was genuinely pleased with, as it seemed to be one of the few that could strike a balance between the catchy, folk-pop sound Animal Collective seems to be leaning toward and the quirks and oddities that filled their previous albums.
Other songs still show plenty of the Collective's idiosyncrasies, but many just don't seem to mesh well with the more pop-based elements of the songs.
The penultimate track, "Cuckoo Cuckoo," is a glaring example of this problem, with a beautiful but repetitive piano melody in the background that really doesn't work amidst all the clatter and noise that fills a good portion of the song.
If Strawberry Jam were the work of another band, perhaps this review might have turned out differently, but because it's Animal Collective, the album is a bit of a letdown. They had fun with this record and it shows, but, as a fan, I just can't help but to expect more from them.