ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: Furry suits might have helped.

Animal Collective are the kind of band — difficult, challenging, mysterious — that adventurous musos like myself are supposed to celebrate. And the band’s new Strawberry Jam (Domino) does succeed in its fusions of art folk, psychedelia, and electronica. Which only made the Avalon show that much more frustrating. Perhaps the absence of one member threw off the Collective interplay. (Geologist, a/k/a Brian Weitz, with his lighted visor, was there along with Avey Tare and Panda Bear — a/k/a David Porter and Noah Lennox — but Conrad Deakon couldn’t make it). The fragile folk melodies that counterpoint the harsh electronic storms were dearly missed.

Maybe I was just expecting too much — furry suits or colorful masks rather than just T-shirts and jeans. The Day of the Dead skeletons that flanked the band were a colorful touch that underscored the occasional bouts of tribal drumming and (largely unintelligible) chants. But that wasn’t enough to offset the incessant, atonal rave-like loops that just kept coming in wave after abrasive wave.