I feel like I've just been born

I subscribe to the belief that an album can be a must buy without every song necessarily being good. It's that whole "nothing is perfect" idea which applies to movies, books, videogames, marriages, etc. Basically, even your favorite things have one or two things you don't like but you are able to either ignore or put up with because the other 98 or 99% of that thing is perfect.

So, while this may come as some hyperbole, Strawberry Jam is a flawless album and my favorite of 2007. Lofty praise, I know, but even if I hadn't been going through the band's discography, Jam can't help but feel like the crowning achievement for the Animal Collective as well as a summation of everything that makes them great. In short, every song on the album is a masterpiece; they all hang together as a whole but go off in wildly different directions sonically.

The album begins with 'Peacebone', a flurry of electronic notes and noise bursting out of silence before a thumping drum beat comes in from stage left and the song is off. The lyrics contain such nuggets as "I bet the monster was happy when they made him a maze" and "only the taste of your cooking can make me bow on the ground." Meanwhile, Avey Tare is giving his vocals the usual modern day Collective workout and the music builds to ecstatic peaks. The album's best song, 'For Reverend Green', has a magnificent noise loop that is every bit the same kind of "warm-but-not-harsh" noise contained on Loveless. Avey Tare delivers what may be his best performance ever on this song, with incredible screams that remind me of 'Grass' from Feels taken to the next logical step. This is not to discredit the rest of the Collective, who deliver the usual brilliantly subtle backing vocals. And when Avey Tare starts repeating "for Reverend Green" over and over before suddenly screaming, the music, too, goes to a magical, passionate crest...and then 'Fireworks' follows, the perfect elemental compliment, all skittering drums and moaning synth lines.

As with Feels, Strawberry Jam's second half is less immediately pleasing. But in this case, it is equally good as the first. '#1' starts with what sounds like a cycling synthesizer part from an 80s school science film but quickly proves itself to be one of the album's most bizarre and instantly recognizable songs, with Panda Bear's beautiful repeating of the title over and over while Avey Tare's garbled, distorted voice dribbles out surreal lyrics which remind me of something Brian Eno might have written in the 70s. 'Winter Wonder Land' is the album's shortest song but it packs more in its 2:45 run time than most bands can in 3 songs: pay close attention to every detail of this song.

The rest of the album is equally deceptively simple as this; the entire work reminds me again and again that the best art rewards you for returning again and again because you keep noticing new things. The album's most advanced and experimental song 'Cuckoo Cuckoo' is exactly what I mean, its plaintive piano loop trading blows with crashing wall of sound drum breaks...but listen again, and you hear more vocals, or an extra keyboard/guitar bit here or there, or you notice that, hey, the piano actually keeps going throughout the song. The album draws to a close with 'Derek', which is off the top of my head only the second song the band has consciously written about a dog. Actually, like 'Doggy' from Campfire Songs, it's addressed directly to a dog. Perhaps more significantly, it ends the album on a sentimental-but-upbeat vibe, with a song that sounds like what Person Pitch might have ended up like if Panda Bear had done the album with the full band instead of solo.

Like the album Radiohead released this year (which you probably know all about, and I won't go into it here!!), Strawberry Jam initially sounds like a consolidation of everything the band had done before while adding nothing new. My initial impression was just that: it's good, but I liked some of the previous releases more. However with enough time with each, they both strike me as the best thing each band has done. And for what it's worth, despite my username, I would rank Strawberry Jam above In Rainbows (as well as many other releases) as album of the year for 2007. In a year that saw so many great albums by so many amazing bands, not to mention the two other Collective-ly related releases, Strawberry Jam stands atop them all as the best.