Auditory Anarchy

I concede, the "Auditory Anarchy" title could have been used for any Animal Collective album put out to date. It's that this experimental combo of Avey Tare and Panda Bear truly came across the Nirvana in Chaos with "Strawberry Jam", at least in my subjective opinion. Look at their last three: 2004's "Sung Tongs" starts with this brilliant bohemian energy through acoustic guitars and lofty chants before frustrating itself with 12 minute guitar meandering; 2005's "Feels" made better on the previous year's effort, as ever incense-ready as any Animal Collective effort (and a slow-burning masterpiece); then 2007's "Strawberry Fields" modified the formula, kicked-up the beats and keyboards whilst not forsaking the maniacal cut-and-paste sample-turned-sublime technique, and *boom*, indeed, the Auditory Anarchy is turned loose at its highest level.

Anarchy, lawlessness, or should we say the natural state of the individual? A song such as "Winter Wonder Land", defies the typical descriptors. It is packed with some of the most astounding vocal harmonies in any sort of music, sweet, often compared to the Beach Boys, with a sort of punk immediacy in the verses, a million percussive sounds clinging and clanging joyously -- it comes together like a cluster of lint and fabric softener in a dryer that makes you some sort of high when you stick your face in it. What rule of thumb does this follow? What genre convention? I mean sure, it does follow a verse-chorus-verse pattern, sure, it has a rocker's harmony, but it is the many elements too numerous to name -- not seemingly, but assuredly disparate -- done with this zeal, this intensity for life, which is, in combination, the anarchy. Nothing programmed about it. This is post-millennial freethinker n hippie sheeeet.

It's meant to tickle your brain, it's meant to cremate the senses. The scattered blips of "Peacebone", solidified with a twee jaunt, sampled demonic screams chaotically opposing a childlike echo on the chorus, it's post-modern phuckery gone perfectly like the aligning of stars, improbably turning our blood to wine. The uninhibited moan on the chorus of "For Reverend Green" along with strangely evocative mix of rough synthesizers reverberating along a skewed and screwed lonely guitar expand the grey matter. Here especially, we hear Tare's modifications as a vocalist, singing more conventionally before becoming frustrated, entrapped, and screaming out the sides of the dense, tight beat provided. A large departure to the slow, unintelligible moans of efforts past. Those screams, those moments of over-stimulating sound collages meeting austere harmony, it all creates the affect of authority-banishment, or, of possibility.

It's music to write to, music to think to, music to let flow through. Air feels better when Animal Collective and "Strawberry Jam" flow through it. The occasional abrasion giving way to an auditory stimulant as transcendent as can be in this terminal world (hear the voices on the chorus "Fireworks" floating in between those bipolar vocals and tell me I'm wrong). Whilst Animal Collective may have been/continue to be one of the most intriguing bands to hit the scene in a while, with their original brand of psychedelic/experimental/folk material, they are now undoubtedly on the path toward becoming one of the most accomplished of their generation.