By George Chen

I'M THROWN OFF whenever some Christian culture sneaks under my secular radar. Discovering the Bible citations on the cups at In-N-Out Burger is an example, but not a particularly menacing one. More disturbing to me is the hit by Switchfoot, "Meant to Live," with its chorus, "We were meant to live for so much more." It's such a heavy-handed and calculated anthem, brimming with emotive earnestness, that it's impossible to take seriously, even if you can't stop humming it. Christian rockers who go for your gut have me running the other way, turning what should be a personal relationship with a higher power into a soccer rally.

My latest brush with Christianity seemed to come from a less obvious place: Animal Collective's song "Forest Gospel" starts with the line "Only my best friend Jesus," or so it sounds. It's hard to make out the exact words because there's a harsh explosion of drums and Dave "Avey Tare" Portner's vocals tend to be muddled by layers of effects, but I wasn't all that surprised to hear him name-drop J.C. – there's always been a Christian-youth summer-camp vibe to Animal Collective shows.

Maybe it felt way too right last summer to see them in the basement of a Seventh Day Adventist church in Berkeley – kids sitting cross-legged on the rec-room floor, blissing out under fluorescent lights. I skip the needle back on 2002's live LP Hollinndagain (St. Ives), and closer listening reveals that Portner is singing, "Only my best friends use a ... coke ... pipe ... crack."

Whew, no Jesus after all. When you see the band live, it's easy to read into the psychedelic and spiritual aspects of the music. I've never done peyote, but listening to the colliding tones and primal yelps makes me feel like I'm on a vision quest. If I could join a freaky hippie cult or band, I'd rather drink Animal Collective's Kool-Aid than hang out at an airport with the Polyphonic Spree. The only lyrical clue to their spiritual leanings on their new album, Sung Tongs (Fat Cat), is a reference to Hare Krishnas, but that's not quite an endorsement for a lifestyle change.

Maybe I'm particularly concerned about the religious bait and switch, having been raised agnostic and then finding out at a YMCA summer camp that the C doesn't stand for camping. My first memory of religion is singing along to songs I didn't understand on a school bus full of kids who, for all I knew, might as well have been pod people. I've mistrusted acoustic guitar-wielding hippies ever since, though Animal Collective's self-titled 2002 Catsup Plate Records side project, under the name Campfire Songs, may have been a turning point for me.

Recorded with three MiniDiscs on a porch, the album is stripped of the usual electronic effects and emphasizes transcendent vocals and song forms without being easily stuffed into the folk folder. This made sense in the same year that Arthur magazine launched its beard-folk agenda and I grew disillusioned with angry rock music.

The group's presence feels like something other than what you'd expect at a rock show or devotional music program. It's like the sound of a communion between nature and technology, birds and sine waves calling and responding.

The group's history is more mundane. Portner, Brian "Geologist" Weisz, and Noah "Panda Bear" Lennox have been tight since attending high school in Maryland. The Avey Tare and Panda Bear duo begun in 2000 became the Animal Collective quartet by 2002 with the addition of Josh "Deaken" Dibb. Their first record, 2003's Here Comes the Indian (Paw Tracks), was dark while maintaining an innocence that plays at being "primitive," judging from the lost boy howling on "Panic."

Regardless of their intentions, I wonder if the group's approach to music opens up a rift in a rigid rock order, allowing for open interpretations of their source material. Much ink has been spilled on the band of late. Their visual presentation in the New York Times, surrounded by trees and wearing crazy turtle and rabbit costumes, makes it hard to pin down the group as anything but psychedelic weirdos. It seems reasonable that they would be channeling spirit animals with analog synths and thumping percussion.

Listening to their evolution up through Sung Tongs feels like watching a metamorphosis, sort of like contemplating that space fetus in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Portner and Lennox eschew electric guitars on this record, hewing to their Campfire Songs material and combining it with their innate sense of experimentation.

Sung Tongs is the clearest they've gotten with vocal recording, emphasizing perhaps the weirdest and strongest element of the band. Neither voice is traditionally pretty, but they sound amazing intertwined and layered. The urgency and humanity of the voices is more compelling than the processed tones of pop divas and American Idols. They draw out syllables and stretch sounds until they fragment, and I find something closer to spirituality in their music, bubbling out of their language. The vocals of traditional Javanese gamelan come to mind, as does Sounds of American Doomsday Cults Vol. 14.

So there's nothing obviously religious or faith-based about the Animal Collective, but other people I've talked to have drawn conclusions similar to my initial reaction. Maybe it's the out-of-body abandon conjured up when they play, or the drum-circle vibe they pick up. It may also be that like a cult, Animal Collective exist outside of the mainstream, even as they receive some of its validation. Either way, I'm following their evolution to the next stage.

Animal Collective play Aug. 25, 9 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, S.F. $13. (415) 885-0750.