Well, whatever, Never-Never Land. This ain't no tweehouse fort. This ain't no Disney-go-round. But savvy counselors at a cult day camp might broadcast Sung Tongs over the PA during 'shrooms-and-cookies hour. Animal Collective's fuzzy-wuzzy instigators, Avey Tare and Panda Bear, sacrifice folk, cracked Beach Boys vinyl, Hawaiian skirts, tribalistic hoo-ha and sanity in the service of what can only be described as childlike, brain-sprained madness. Every song is too extra-dimensionally magical, too beguilingly weird to accept as real -- you half-expect them to dissolve before your eyes like heat-induced illusions. For instance, "The Softest Voice," a 10-mile-deep slog through a haunted, chime-studded beaded curtain. Or the barbershop quartet on "College," which sounds like it's sliding into a vat of boiling oil. Or the suspended-animation vocal dreck of "Kids on Holiday," stuck in the amber behind a tweaked guitar motif. Or the druggy, Donald Duck warble of "Whaddit I Done." The weirdness flows steadily between Tare and Bear and gets all over the listener's synapses. Delightfully, it can't be scrubbed out.
