Joyously Anarchic Pop for Your Summer Trips

My only exposure to Animal Collective is Strawberry Jam, their seventh album. They've clearly refined their quirky brand of sunshine pop over the years. This is an album that wants to celebrate and be loved, but on its own terms. While these songs are fit for your next barbeque, your friends better be either hip or understanding.

That's because some parts of this album are deeply annoying. It opens with electronic gibberish, seemingly trying to scare off those who might not get the rest of the album. Hopefully, you can get through the first half minute of buzzing computer vomit in "Peacebone," because it pulls together and becomes some really catchy and original pop.

I call it pop instead of rock because of the bright and upbeat melodies and the simple yet catchy beats. Animal Collective is not a band to play straightforward pop, as many songs tease and threaten to burst into discordant chaos at any moment. But it's that anarchic spirit that makes the album so interesting and so much fun.

Their songs take light and airy pop melodies and twist them about a quarter turn to the surreal. It's the kind of psychedelia you'd get if Willy Wonka made LSD. Broken Atari games, muffled vacuum cleaners, and friendly robot dancers careen around the background. The buzz of modern life polished and reshaped into a playground for your ears.

You can sense the Beach Boys influence on this album from the light, summery melodies to the dense production. The songs can seem cluttered at times, though I feel the individual simplicity of each part allows the clutter to form into majestic shapes and patterns. There's an innocence to a lot of these songs, too, that feels like a throwback to the world of the Beach Boys.

The album centerpiece, "Fireworks," shows off everything that this band does right. Starting with an echoing drum machine or possibly a helicopter that begins in the previous song, this song sets a tinkling piano and a looming electronic swell behind the singer's joyous hoots. At nearly seven minutes, this song still feels too short.

Like a lot of their songs, "Fireworks" strikes a delicate balance between uptempo pop and introspection. It's feel good music, but the kind of good feeling that comes from sitting on your balcony in the sun; enjoying the pure and simple pleasure of being alive at that very moment, no future, no past.

Not every experiment works. "#1" tries to pile too many oddball elements on one another - a cascading keyboard riff from futures past, an artificially wobbled vocal part, and soft bleeps and bloops. In the end, it's a bit sterile, like robot nostalgia. Other times, they strip the main melody down so far, as in "Cuckoo Cuckoo." You beg for them to burst this quiet bubble, to release that chaos they're holding back. Fortunately, they do, but it feels far too infrequent in this song.

Overall, Strawberry Jam is a very strong album, full of joyous anarchy, a summer disc for your trip at the beach. Its experiments succeed more often than they fail. These guys are pop music that I neither feel guilty about liking or listen to ironically. That's right, Journey, I'm talking about you.