Strawberry Jam probably has the most shocking album cover I’ve seen in years. More shocking than the plaid cartoon pornstars on Cex’s last album; more shocking than the nude conjoined twins with their heads aflame on Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing’s Shocking. The latest Animal Collective album features a strawberry, crushed, as if it were on the way to becoming, well, jam. What is impressive is the way its presentation in an extremely close photo turns it into something that is at once disgusting, sexual, provocative and compelling – in short, shocking.
Animal Collective is probably the craziest-sounding band I can immediately think of. Crazy is not to be confused with weird, the more hotly sought quality for which untold numbers of experimental, fringe and indie artists strive, whether they would admit it or not. But crazy is nonetheless a prized distinction, probably more closely associated with heavy metal, a genre whose artists compete largely for who can sound the most insanely angry, evil, or just all-around extreme. What Animal Collective does, however, is more subversive. Rather than trying their hardest to constantly harness the maximum extreme-ness possible, they take recognizable pop structure and punctuate it with sounds that are loud, piercing, and, frequently, repeated. The best single embodiment of this aesthetic is the shrill, cracking, brief scream that I assume is a human yelp, but which could perfectly well be a unicorn being impaled by a triceratops. Either way, it’s primal.
I can’t say that listening to Strawberry Jam has never given me a headache, and if I were a migraineur they’d probably be more frightening than red wine, halogen lights and my menstrual period combined. They can tend to fall into a formula of their own peculiar shock-pop, but overall Strawberry Jam boasts a collection of songs varied enough to keep the listener intrigued throughout. Like the stirring image of the strawberry on the album cover, Animal Collective has a penchant for taking the ordinary and revealing the potential for madness hidden just beneath the surface.
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