Through A Child’s Eyes: Talking About Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam

Chance Lytle 7 May 2018

What makes an album is messily drumming your fingers out of step with a beat

down a highway; splicing segments of it into a mix CD with poorly drawn, bootleg art;

mishearing lyrics for years and laughing at realizations. These parts mature with you,

different chunks randomly rising to the surface, developing an impression of the whole.

When played straight through, albums can create an organic, bubbly mix of all the

manufactured memories surrounding them. The noticed changes in loving and listening

to it layer with the nostalgia of the original emotions surrounding it. Yet, the refractions

of what’s heard can be radically different from what went into it. Animal Collective

cram new takes on their age-old themes and fresh synths and samples into a tight, mason

jar prism to make as perfect a pop album as you can get. STRAWBERRY JAM is

abstract and personal to the point where it risks sinking in its gooey depths, but it remains

optimistic, hopeful. A near-decade of transcribing nostalgia toward childhood and

fantasy lead up to its place as a transitional record, focused on the band’s new, immediate

present.

By the time its first tracks debuted live in October 2005, Panda Bear had moved

across the Atlantic. Avey Tare had started performing with Kría Brekkan the summer before. Geologist had just finished graduate studies. Deakin was soon to take a breather after the tour. The band had put out an album a year since 2000, but 2006 was the first one they missed. With tour dates still being consistently booked, it is evident that new

responsibilities and livelihoods weren’t dividing them, only changing their output. Like a

growth spurt ending, the thrashing of the band’s rapid, experimental album releases pushed through acoustic sounds then electric then electronic to come to a head with

STRAWBERRY JAM. It was their last album to feature guitars. After release, Avey bandied that their sound had become so different with newly attentive synths, samples, and twisted strings that they rename themselves The Painters, but was met with some eye rolls. It’s hard to say when someone reaches adulthood, enough to be confident in a lasting name and skin, but STRAWBERRY JAM is Animal Collective’s last inch cut into the doorframe. It harmonizes the individual voices of each member, now spread across two coasts and inside mushrooming family trees, into yet another passionately different direction, but unprecedently one they would stick to up until THE PAINTERS

EP, a revival of that earlier name. Impeccably showcasing the empathetic unity learned throughout their release history, the album is a highway interchange of all the members’ new lives, twisted into a pretzel over each other.

The union they set out to create comes from a similar place as the title. The album is named after the sharply futuristic but natural-feeling bits in a strawberry jam packet on an airplane; the album throws synthesizers and samples into the band’s established, organic production standards. Every song has an underlying repetition, seemingly machined and automatic but with human inconsistencies. The noise added complexity to mixing the subtler auxiliary instruments and backing vocals. The double- helix songs reach to a deeper core than the comparatively more stripped-down albums, but took effort to maintain a level drill head. The band still refers to it as the hardest to

1

mix while trying to maintain an amalgamated sound. On FEELS, they had difficulty

balancing piano and unused mandolin contributions with the new electrics, always

focusing on that “one organic sound.” Sun City Girls engineer Scott Colburn was tapped

for his experience. Blending together their past of noise and drone sketches and keeping on Colburn provided the organization necessary to keep STRAWBERRY jamming. In the desert heat of Tucson, Arizona, they baked every channel into the whole they wanted.

No part apparently overlays another; at worst, accent parts bubble up unexpectedly, but like globs of fruit hidden in otherwise smooth jam, they are the best parts. The album’s

cyclic approach reveals new texture on each chunk with each pass. The small deviations

in rolls and sounds that give the synthetic album this human edge were carefully laid and developed. They give off an air of improvisation and live performance even in mastered studio recordings.

Unlike previous albums, three songs were not played live prior to release:

“Unsolved Mysteries,” “Winter Wonder Land,” and “Derek.” Together with “Chores,”

“Mysteries” and “Winter” form the childlike cornerstone of the album. They draw from

the band’s oft-visited wells to ground and mellow out the record’s overall progression to

adulthood. During live shows of the era, they were thrown together with live installments

of the also erratic and sentimental “We Tigers,” “Daffy Duck,” and “Kids on Holiday.”

Animal Collective never abandon the sound and lyricism they grew up with, but always

present it in a new, current light, be it with the benefit of hindsight or longing.

“Unresolved Mysteries” laments the imaginary mysteries of a child’s world left as

hanging threads through chopped up rhythms, while “Chores” revels in the undying wish

to escape responsibility. The importance of giving oneself up to the past is never lost,

2

just remembered and savored differently. Memories of fun and love end up driving life’s

progression just as much as the challenges of the present. These songs are an olive branch between childhood and adulthood. Despite crossing the line to the latter, there are always fossils and gems to be found in “the dinosaur wing” of life’s museum.

“Peacebone” warns of getting lost in there, but still stresses the importance of cherishing the “few things…related to the ‘old times’.” As the album opener, it lies bare the album’s theme of transition by throwing away attachment to the way things have been for trusting what’s inside: the same imagination that has always been there. By solidifying their respect for chosen parts of the past, the band can tackle others to the ground.

The stretch from “Reverend Green” through “Fireworks” to “#1” is the heart of the album’s progression. The songs coagulate the album’s different make-up, setting it

apart from FEELS’ present-tense moments of love and loss or HERE COMES THE

INDIAN’s crayon-scribbled yelps. Maintaining the cyclic underpinnings of the rest of

the album, “Green” takes a guitar mangled with shifted pitch, tremolo, and distortion into

a riot of voices. The isolation of fairy tales in screened-in porches dissolves in a free-for-

all of societal angst that expresses an empathy matured beyond anything before. More

than wild animals or spirits, the vocals are, at last, surrounded by people and ideas of as

intense emotion as themselves. For me, the song finally clicked with a mondegreen.

Mishearing “I think it's alright they're together \ Now” signaled with a burning sign how

stubborn and pointless it was to close off someone from a life they cared about. The

world we live in is connected by more than “touches [to] breasts;” it’s “alright” to lapse

and “feel inhuman” from time to time if the possible depth of all humans is learned. The

“papers” or standards don’t “know what’s best,” the sincerity is always in us, clashing

3

and coming together both on a raw level. The vocal bridge emboldens virtues that have

been sung about in every past album, children and their guiltless perspectives, but only

now are looked at reflectively in a time where they risk being forgotten rather than

unembodied. The childlike ease of connection should never be lost even when fearing the canyons that can divide us. Play dates give way to “a thousand wasted Brooklyners” in the streets, a new exchange of life with all the intensity of the past. The song’s riot of doubled chords on the pavement and the collective mirror it forces up are send-ups of the ideals of the manic forest dances and creative ferment of the band’s New York and

Baltimore. They’re surprised at what can happen so close to home, closer than imagined lands and beings. All that needs to be done is connect the worlds of urban bystanders to refresh emotions worn down by the times, emotional heights still attainable after “a shifting” and weathering a riot against the hardships of society and perspective.

The riot screeches and breaks down to staccato drops of rain in a torrent, a pitter- patter drumline growing into a new song. The guitar revives the FEELS era slap-back to revisit “Banshee Beat”-style love. The vocal blooms express a melancholy acknowledging the long time that has passed since last seeing love “from the night from before.” Flashbacks and flashforwards collide amid the consistent, droning drumbeat.

“Fireworks” earns a welcome departure of ego following young love as the speaker grows to treat themselves and their former partner as individuals after and above a misshapen relationship. The speaker can step outside the relationship they were once drowning in and separate the partner from the once-shared love to let them both thrive.

The latter is no longer unnecessarily “lifted up” by “tired” repetition but now able to exist, to the speaker, individually as they are. The song’s narrative begins with the break-

4

up still crystallizing, creating an imagined shelter from the fallout with the first verse’s

future tense. In early live iterations, “Fireworks” was reworked into a suite with an

interlude of “Essplode” between the bridge, combining the furtive, sunbaked dream of

watching summer fireworks with a callback to regressed senses of honey butter air,

fucking together, a blanket melee—when it was simple. The arranged song, from the earlier DANSE MANATEE, is a regression. The guitar is stripped back to the rawer, acoustic reverb of older albums. The interspersed verse is practically spoken word, free of the older album’s noise and harsh frequencies. It is more of a pure memory of the song in its youthful days, clean and filtered, expressing that which was lost, but failing to reach a satisfying explosion, much like its use as an interlude. It is the peak of a rose- tinted escape. The hallucination blurs into timely cymbal hits and comes back to the forward certainty of “Fireworks.” Nothing is as it was in that dream; the empty speaker struggles to emote as everything “passes right by [them]”.

With time, progress, and a switch to past tense in the second and last verse, the speaker gets to look back on “a sacred night,” be it a fish fry or swimming pool, as a single memory rather than an overwhelming, false reality. The revelation of their lover as a “good friend” and “birth-kin” despite their actions is a moral finally derived from the tales and experiences of the past. There is value in memory. For once, personal achievement isn’t attained by retreating to frenzy or fear, ritually assuming something must not have been done right, but by facing the pressure of the present “trees of this day” to “battle” for the “light” inside themself. It all seems rotten, but it is just something that happens. The stained experiences are illuminated in a new light, highlighting both their flaws and joys rather than treating them as dreams to idealize. Moving forward in

5

the world with enlightened, yet still firmly positive, childlike eyes, brings a renewed self-

sympathy. The speaker losing themself in what “you” or “I” could’ve been bears no fruit. They realize the shared memories of “Fireworks” on a summer night can be revisited time and time again to feel love, not loss. A former love hasn’t selfishly taken it away; they share this humble memory, too.

Like a cell mid-division, the icy keyboard chords of “#1” create a back-and-forth

between lockstep movement and alternating major-minor runs. The instrumentation

grows apart or together as it pleases. The speaker’s vocoded, deepened voice lays above another’s untilled mantras. The former’s second-person, paternal voice attempts to prepare the lower, the “son”, for life’s bad times, wobbling and wavering, splitting the synth line, but the son’s impatient ears are in control. Their echoed, unfiltered lines continue, regardless of if they absorbed any warning or meaning, focused inward and

dismissing the father’s past as a “waste.” Live versions have further refutations of letting

the father in, melding away into transitions unfinished. The two make suggestions and

affirmations back and forth, their dialogue uncertain. The keyboards end divided, two

separate parts finishing their own song. In completing the centerpiece trio of the album,

“#1” showcases maturity more than any other song on it. The shifts between father and

son create a duality not apparent in earlier lyrics. Traditionally, one voice has focused on

one idea of one song. Here, the endeavoring and endearing resignation of the paternal

voice toward their son disrupts the atemporality of a summer tour with no end, stars

playing at night, or boys playing cowboys and Indians. They leverage hope at the son,

instilling the uncertainty of “bad weather” no matter how thoroughly prepared.

Unyielding, the son will build their own future, going against the father’s ideas, as is

6

chanted and later expressed in the key’s separation. Animal Collective have taken their

ideals—childhood, love, fantasy—into themselves as edifying memories and as a spirit to

be passed on through connections no matter how difficult or in vain. They choose to not to let them vanish amid lonely figures.

After the levity and brevity of “Winter Wonder Land,” itself from as far back as the INDIAN sessions, the album closes on two approaches to finality. Much of the

album’s progress has focused on giving oneself to others, considering one’s ego and

theirs. The closers illustrate the pain of failing that. “Cuckoo Cuckoo” contrasts the

album’s involved energy with a listless piano sample, aching electrics running along it,

and lurching vocals. A part of the album’s learned selflessness dies with it, not because

of anything done wrong, but as any other act of God. Ostensibly about a miscarriage, the

speaker is coping with the death of a “boy” they put their all into. Empty of arrogance,

the speaker as “king” had utmost pride in him, making the complete deflation of having him taken away almost humiliating. It does not make sense. Those around maintain apathy, staying in their own “golden days” regardless of neighboring “rain” or shine, compartmentalized from nearby suffering. Nothing makes sense, primal cries and furious cymbals remain unheard. “Derek” is the other side of the coin, fluctuating from

“Cuckoo’s” resounding heart beats to calm, natural shakers. Despite the pain that can come from selflessly giving yourself to others, the song stresses that making close, intimate relationships is worthwhile. Isolating yourself, locking off lovers, or

“[wrapping] your pecker” in response to the old times prevents renewed, reciprocal joy.

The insight gained from loss, reconciliation, and growth provides reason for it, enabling opening oneself to let the outside “see inside.” Life’s absurdity at any extreme can be

7

dealt with together if we “count” on each other to make sense of it. As closers, “Cuckoo”

and “Derek” dismiss any anti-sociality caused by the unpleasant pasts tackled throughout the album in favor of unending forgiveness to oneself and those around them. They look at the world with patience and tolerance now, still always through a child’s eyes.

The rest of the album—save “Winter Wonder Land”—debuted live shortly after release in September 2007 alongside material from the full-length, still-in-the-works follow-up, MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILLION. The next year brought the traditional companion EP, WATER CURSES, containing the last bits from the

STRAWBERRY recording sessions in a more laid-back setting. The EP’s title track and

“Safer” were tried out on STRAWBERRY’s track list but were cut for length. Many consider the latter a microcosm of the album’s themes, wrapped up neatly into a minotaur’s maze and always prevalent in the then-nascent live shows, but it flows better in history as a B-side. The album and accompanying material were well received.

Animal Collective’s use of samples and synths would grow with each release thereafter, leading to no shows with guitars and experimental, “site-specific” sets at the Guggenheim in New York and the Music Box in New Orleans. PAINTING WITH is entirely electronic with live drums. Eventually, most members returned to guitar-based albums, with Deakin’s SLEEP CYCLE in 2016 and Avey’s EUCALYPTUS in 2017, but all would retain heavily influence from looped soundscapes and synthetic drives. Panda

Bear’s 2018 A DAY WITH THE HOMIES EP is a three-dimensional, space filling tackling of the sonic layering of STRAWBERRY and MERRIWEATHER.

By 2005, Animal Collective had come of age. Two years of live refinements and changing cultures pressured new, exploratory material proclaiming that enough to have it jell

8

into an album that solidified it. The band travelled into electronica, bringing their stuffed bears

and magic sticks as mementos, and evolved their sound and complexity yet again. As the end of

sound-shifting prolificacy for them, the album is a bittersweet transition to a life with varied

responsibilities. The importance of living that life with flavors of fantastic energy is what

Animal Collective shares with us. STRAWBERRY JAM is a collection of memories, yours and theirs, with a specific taste, a peculiar turning point sonically, emotionally, and universally.

9