ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
"WINTER WONDER LAND"
from the forthcoming STRAWBERRY JAM
WORDS: AW HENDERSON
This is one of those songs that makes sense in whatever context you happen to hear it. It's a short, explosive pop song with all of the thump of "We Tigers," the scratched throatiness of "Grass" and the nativistic hedonism of "Who Could Win a Rabbit?" (so, basically, it's got the best parts of the last two AC albums with none of the stargazing). Which is good, because it just so happens to fall between Strawberry Jam's slowest tracks, "#1" and "Cuckoo Cuckoo ", so in the scheme of the album "Winter Wonder Land" performs the added role of flipping the turbo switch ON. Lines like "If you don't believe you're dying/ I won't tell you that you're dying/ Do you not believe you're dying just because it gets you down?" don't mean anything on paper, but they become bedrock truth when they're shouted out like the Collective does here. It may not be the best song on the album, but it's the catchiest and the most energetic and it's one good reason why Strawberry Jam is already one of my favorite albums of the year. But you already knew that.