Best of 2011: PANDA BEAR - "Tomboy"

by Nico2.0 on Dec 20, 2011 10:31 AM CST

We of course love football here at RBR, but if you've spent more than five minutes around here you've also figured out that we listen to a ton of music and talk about it a lot too. In addition to writing up previews of all 34 non-Bama bowl games, I'm going to spend a brief bit of time letting you all know about some of my favorite albums of 2011 over the next 10 days or so. I'll probably put up one or two of these a day so you can sample a wide variety of what 2011 had to offer up musically. First up, Panda Bear's Tomboy.

There's almost no way on earth this album could live up to the expectations people had for it. Noah Lennox has maintained a stellar career both as a solo artist (as Panda Bear) and as one of the driving forces behind Animal Collective. His previous solo album, Person Pitch, was ranked by Pitchfork as the #9 album of the decade ranging from 2000-2009 and the last Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post Pavillion, came in at #14 on that same list. No pressure Noah, no pressure at all.

The album encapsulates so many moods that it's tempting to just put YouTube clips of all 11 tracks on here and let you sort through them for yourself. Songs range from the hypnotically and gloriously repetitious "everything and the kitchen sink" aesthetic of "Slow Motion" to the churning minimalism of "Alsatian Darn" to the cathedral hymn-esque "Benfica" to the tripped out "Friendship Bracelet."

And for those of you that ask, no, not all of these selections will be this "weird," but this guy is our contemporary version of Brian Wilson and these are the "Pet Sounds" of today. In the near future people will appreciate these even more than they do now. On to a couple of tracks....

"Slow Motion"

"Alsatian Darn"

"Benfica"

"Friendship Bracelet"

FanPosts are just that; posts created by the fans. They are in no way indicative of the opinions of SBN and the authors of Roll Bama Roll.

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I gave each of these a chance,

but it just doesn’t do anything for me. I certainly don’t pretend to know what I’m talking about, but there’s just entirely too much noise for the sake of noise in these for me. It’s as if he’s made an album based entirely upon my least favorite things from the Animal Collective songs I’ve heard.

Side note: Doesn’t the part 3:00 into “Benfica” sound a lot like a muted version of the beginning of “My Girls”?

by Orlando McCain on Dec 20, 2011 8:20 PM CST reply actions

It's not terribly uncommon...

…for composers (and I’d put Lennox in the area somewhere between songwriter and composer) to use similar thematic ideas and material in different pieces. I can see what you’re saying, though yeah, it’d definitely be muted. It has kind of a “bubbling up” effect.

I admit this stuff’s not for everyone, but I think he’s literally tapped into something that won’t be fully understood or appreciated for a while. It’s heavily layered for sure and sounds amazing on headphones (though that’s not a prerequisite.) You can just hear so much more of what’s going on in an environment where you seal off all other sounds/ambient noise.

RollBamaRoll.com

by Nico2.0 on Dec 20, 2011 8:53 PM CST up reply actions