For a while, I held the assumption that everything Animal Collective did before Strawberry Jam was impenetrably avant garde, stomping along like some pagan ritual that had more to do with hollering through synth noises than making anything concerned with the traditional definition of music, let alone pop music. Then, it came to my attention that they had at one point made an acoustic album, and curiosity bade me to seek it out.

And while it’s true that acoustic guitars strum throughout the record, this isn’t exactly an album you’d put on if you’re in the mood for something like Cat Stevens. Similarly, the vocals borrow extensively from the Beach Boys’ bag of sunny melodies and harmonies (especially on the 53 second College), but Sung Tongs is far from Pet Sounds. It is frantic at times (Who Could Win A Rabbit, We Tigers), subdued to the point of ambiguity at others (Kids on Holiday, Visiting Friends). Voices shout or coo or laugh manically as acoustic guitars are busily strummed or calmly finger-picked or reverberated into infinity.

Since it’s release, it has been cited as a classic–and rightly so, I’ve found. It is brother to albums like Cocteau Twins Victorialand, Grouper’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, or Atlas Sound’s Logos–acoustic albums that redefined the boundaries of what an acoustic album could or could not be–at once familiar and other worldly.