Animal Collective- Strawberry Jam

My recently acquired recording of Strawberry Jam is pretty sweet.

Maybe a little tame in comparison to some of the earlier works of Animal collective, but sweet all the same. I was familiar via Youtube with several of the tracks already, like the eccentrically lyrical Fireworks and the darkly hallucinogenic-electronic folk of Peacebone.

Chores, the third track, feels like a kind of homage to the The Shaggs, and their only release- philosophy of the world. The track 06 #1 has a continuous minimalistic electronic organ pattern reminiscent of Riley's Persian Surgery Dervishes or Glass' Music in a Similar motion.

The 8th song in the set, Cuckoo Cuckoo, uses a sample of a luscious late-Romantic piano chord progression (i don't know what its lifted from, Faure? Scriabin? cant tell), repeated endlessly with the groups typically strident vocals and electronics layered over that peaceful piano sound bite.
All in all, in this disk we get a continuation and development of the groups' ability of creating simple, folksy lyricism along side visceral, experimental electronics, dissonances and a strong eclecticism and energy.