Track Review ⊙ Daily Ops Home
Panda Bear :: "Carrots"Carrots/KKKKK (2007)
I was slow to come around to Animal Collective back in the day -- even after Sung Tongs (2004) I wasn’t completely sold. There was something too manic and goofy about the group that took me a while to get used to. Mostly, though, it took hearing Panda Bear’s Young Prayer (2004). A simple, pretty little album, Young Prayer helped to get at the core of the music that Animal Collective was working toward: confused, often blissful, and occasionally cathartic pop music that is born of deep feelings and primal instincts. It is music with very little pretense, a necessarily limited vocabulary, and impressive emotional heft. Young Prayer just made it comprehensible.
Person Pitch, Noah Lennox’s solo return under the Panda Bear moniker, looks to be a different beast altogether. On the Paw Tracks website it’s described as a “musical 180” from Young Prayer, and that’s not far off. Lushly produced, sonically fascinating, and rich in texture and lyrics, this is a solo disc that comes dangerously close to showing up Animal Collective. The first sign of this, for those who have been paying attention, is “Carrots,” Panda Bear’s cut on a split 12” with Excepter that dropped last week on Paw Tracks.
“Carrots,” which also appears on Person Pitch, is a mindbender. Over the course of thirteen minutes, Lennox manages to splice together elements of weird tribal drumming, random noise ambience, indie pop, and dub reggae. I won’t claim it makes sense, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work. The first section of the track rides on heavy drums and repetitive chanting, letting Lennox demonstrate his skill on the boards. Sounds seem to melt together into an increasingly hazy background; however, an element, be it those thick drums or the soaring backing vocals, will occasionally push forward for a startling moment of clarity. And then, at the 4:35 mark, it starts morphing into a pretty straightforward, Beach Boys-inflected pop track. The gorgeous low-in-the-mix vocals, mechanical drumming, and looped piano give it the feel of a Cansecos or Russian Futurists track, and Lennox lets it ride. As 8:15 rolls around the bass starts coming through heavy, and the song goes through the rabbit hole into the world of dub. It’s a smooth transition, with Lennox’s toy piano providing a nice counterpoint to the thick bass. Lennox is stepping up his game here, and while it might not have the quiet charm of Young Prayer’s best moments, it certainly shows a musician pushing the boundaries of genre and coming up with something both fascinating and beautiful.
Peter Hepburn :: 29 January 2007 |
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