Day of Atonement & Strawberry Jam.

I hope all who celebrated had a good yom kipper, and for all you who like me just go for granny's pre/post-fast meals enjoyed them (I haven't fasted at yom kipper for years).

For me it was a time to rediscover the painful consumer mecca of the mall. Living in an urban environment has me accustomed to a more diluted form of capitalism where i need to travel a bit to find what i want, and where i am taken to different neighborhoods and areas to find what i need/want. To travel to a mall, see it looming over the horizon, and walk through a food court and to know there are countless other faceless buildings like this in all directions, sprawling their homogeneous messages of blase spending really makes me worried.

The mall is a place where more and more children spend their days learning to be good americans (consumers) and wasting valuable time and energy on unhealthy food, poor saving habits, retarded trends, and unnatural socializing. The mall is no new image of a sick culture. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead has the living dead wandering their malls much like the were doing when they were just living. Even the name doesn't make sense--- what is a MALL anyway--- and why do they use the same word for that area of political buildings and museums in DC?

It is easy to be suckered in to the their "no interest for 1 year", "one day sale" mentality - but in the end is there one fucking thing you really need from the Sharper Image? I'd love to see some of that useless shit on some painfully impoverished brown family in some country i have trouble pronouncing in which electricity is a far off myth.

Hunter S. Thompson's understanding of the book of Revelations may be more represented through these malls and their signaling, along with the hurricanes, tsunamis, mass corruption, government upheaval, terrorism, and the state of current radio that the end is near.


whew.

well if you've read this whole thing you deserve to be rewarded. The apocalypse isn't really on the horizon- unlike the mall- we are as alive as anyone else who came before us, perhaps more so- and we have Animal Collective who prove that our ears can still be in good hands.

I had heard the hype regarding Strawberry Jam, and questioned its validity, but they guys have truly out done themselves and have crafted a different, energetic effort that begs to be enjoyed. Winter Wonder Land is a good representation of the albums layered psychedelic beauty. The album unfolds for the listener; shedding layer after layer- or conversely works from bare minimum of sounds and texture to towering crescendos.




Enjoy.

Winter Wonder Land