A Distraction, Revealing: Strawberry Jam

It's not my words that you should follow, it's your inside
Adjust your insides!

There is something inherently obsessive about music listening. Time and time again we come across records that we listen to over and over, and in many cases eventually kill, if only for a little while. We obsess over these albums because they are catchy, infectious, innovative, or just plain perfect for that given moment. Once in a while a record comes along that is more than awesome; there’s something about it that owns us, that demands repeated listens. There’s something about it that seems overly appropriate for that specific time. It becomes the soundtrack to now.

Such is the case with Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam. Every single note belongs, could never exist in any other context except this one. The album keeps revealing itself listen upon listen; it’s like an endless game of hide and seek. It’s partly a matter of relating on a personal level to the music. In this sense it is a source of confirmation. In another sense the album serves as a revealing force. As the tracks unravel and acquire new meaning, they reinvent life and give new significance to each moment.

And from one moment to a next
Shifting in the plates of what you ingest

Music, by nature, is temporal; it depends on time both in its composition as well as its meaning. Just like Attali observed, “Time traverses music and music gives meaning to time.” Music is cumulative. A song can trigger a specific memory or feeling, as it stockpiles meaning with each repeated listen. After all, “To take on meaning, it requires an incompressible lapse of time, that of its own duration.” Without a listener, recorded music is merely an object. We define music in the same way that music comes to define us. Mutual affirmation. Still, there are certain sounds, feelings, and ideas embedded in the music that exist apart from us.

And I can't hold what's in my hand
Don't do any good to say this isn't what I planned
And little kids slide down on the steel park slides
Little kids can't play with things that've died

Despite the band’s apparent need for a sonic compass, there’s something about Strawberry Jam that grounds me in the present. It’s a perfect fit. As immediate as it is, the album still exudes a curious futuristic glow. Constantly on the verge of chaos, it hurtles and surges and replenishes and purges. It feels like you’re always inches away from falling off a cliff, then the music seizes you and tosses you high up into the air and pretends like it won’t be there to catch you on the way down but of course it always is. A reassuring sort of confusion. It’s okay to be confused, to not know what is going on. At least it IS going on. Sometimes life is a fucking rope ladder.

My tears quenched five feet along
And I can scream but cannot yawn
And people gonna come and people gonna cry
We cry "we hope it's worth the age we die!"

Countless elements are at work here, which although at first seem discordant or cluttered, with mounting momentum they melt into the sublime. This is the sound of movement. Sailboat, helicopter, sled, mule. Traveling through an aquatic labyrinth. I want to get as close to the sound’s source as possible, be it the gentle background gurgle of “#1” or Avey Tare’s guttural cries on “For Reverend Green.” This is easily one of the most life-affirming songs I’ve heard in a while. I raise my fist to the sky as Tare yelps, “Now I think it’s all right to feel inhuman / Now I think that’s all right yeah!” As a pair, “Cuckoo Cuckoo” and “Derek” prove to be an overwhelmingly powerful conclusion. Though neither artist nor listener can always be sure where this group is headed, they are definitely on their way.

Simply put, I would do whatever this album told me to do. I would murder a teddy bear if that were what it wanted. As much as I keep on living, this album keeps refusing to die. Life can be syrupy, but at least there’s a constant flow.


“Synchronicity rules chaos with an iron hand, and it is only the merciful defense of some kind of brain filter that keeps us from going mad seeing how it all fits together. When this brain defense wears thin, we see the mind’s boggling connectiveness of every event in time and space and reel from the nausea of unrelenting synchronicity.”

-Andrei Codrescu