PeeP on PoP- Panda Bear

Panda Bear- Tomboy (Paw Tracks- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

58 

Ever feel like you’ve missed the boat? I have a lot of respect for what Noah Lennox and his bros in Animal Collective have achieved, taking their weird psych-rhythmic-pop-chant somnambulism and turning it into a small cottage industry that has given them critical and commercial success. More power to ‘em!; but I have pretty much had it all fly right over my head, aside from 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, which was a tremendous success because AC let pop sensibilities power through the dense, unexpected instrumentation and (purposely) repetitive vocals. 

It’s not to say there isn’t some of that on Tomboy as well, but it takes a bit longer to expand beyond its dangerously-close-to-New Age-noodling , and it’s not until tracks three and four, ‘Surfer’s Hymn’ and ‘Last Night at the Jetty’ that the songs bloom into full-blown set pieces that have more than just one or two notes repeated over hip-hop or electro beats and Panda Bear’s often indecipherable, shamanistic, reverb-y vocals. I struggle with not "getting” Panda Bear and the rest of Animal Collective, as my anxiety tells me it’s due to not taking drugs (an asset, in my opinion) or maybe a lack of some sort of intellectual rigor on my part (an unfortunate possibility). What I really think it boils down to, though, is that music being challenging does not necessarily equal art any more than it being accessible means it isn’t. Also, I keep expecting Leonard Nimoy to chime in while listening to Tomboy with, “This is…. ‘In Search Of’….”

For Fans of:  Mercury Rev, uh.. Animal Collective