Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam was the second of the group’s that I got round to listening to. It initially took a few goes with Merriweather Post Pavilion. But when that album finally clicked, it only made sense to find out what the band was really about by listening to what else they had offer. According to 18-year-old me who wrote the post on Strawberry Jam‘s closer ‘Derek’ back in the old times, that track and today’s track ‘Peacebone’, the album’s opener, ‘left a mark’. A bit of a vague remark there. I would say that meant that it left an impression of ‘Hell yeah, I’d listen to that again any time.’ I’ve always been the guy who always likes a bit of well-executed oddness in songs, and I think when I was 18, ‘Peacebone’ was that track falling under that category that I had been waiting to listen to for my whole life up to that point.

‘Bonefish’ is the first word you hear on the album before your suddenly smacked with the splattered wall of frizzling synthesizer sounds. That seems to last forever until the ‘bonefish’ sample is repeated to mark the entry of Panda Bear’s drums, which establish the bouncy, forceful rhythm the whole song relies upon. There’s something real cartoony about this one. The bounciness, the samples that come in and out of the frame at various points. The slidiness of the guitar chords in the pre-choruses. I could imagine a child going crazy to it, despite them having no idea who Animal Collective are or what the song’s about. But it would be rather fitting, seeing as the whole album has a running theme of nostalgia and the innocence and loss of childhood running through it. Maybe it was Avey Tare’s & co’s plan all along.

Speaking of Avey Tare, his vocals are absolutely mezmerizing here. Pitchfork’s review on the album made a note highlighting his performance with his cords throughout the album. But even if you didn’t go on to listen to the rest, it’s all on show here. The chorus has him leaping from his standard chest voice to a heady falsetto, which will in turn then be wiped away with this absolutely primal screams. Nothing will prepare you for that anxiety-inducing break where he’s yelling with sheer intensity. It’s absolute insanity. And then it just goes back into what’s the final verse as if nothing happened at all. Can’t say this track is boring, that’s for sure. Almost ten years on from that first experience with it and Strawberry Jam, but I still can’t resist the urge to wig out when this track gets going.