Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sung from a flying fortress high in the sky , 11 April 2007
Any band who list -as Panda Bear do on the insert sleeve -influences such as Scott Walker, Ennio Morricone, The Beach Boys, Vashti Bunyan ,ELO, The Chills are as far as I'm concerned a band that needs to be heard. ....though I think they are pushing it a bit by counting Phil Collins in their as well .
Panda Bear is actually Noah Lennox, a member of The Animal Collective ensemble .While their avant-folk is based around some sort of pastoral affinity Panda Bear are far more in tune with more spiritual concerns , or at least that's how it sounds. The whole thing seems to be have been sung from some point high in the atmosphere where the vocals and to some extent the instrumentation has been rendered hazy and reverb heavy , as if the music's been filtered through the ozone layer and stripped of it's immediacy in the process. That's not a bad thing by the way .
The songs on Person Pitch are constructed , assembled , insert your own verb here from looped samples, and snippets of found sounds-trains rattling by, owls hooting , ephemeral snatches of conversation - some run backwards ,including vocal lines. It's psychedelic and yet has definitive connections with the repetitive nature of much electronic and ambient music while sounding curiously analog and organic.
The thing that really elevates Person Pitch are the multi-lapping vocal harmonies which are obviously where The Beach Boy comparisons come in . "Bros" , a twelve minute anthem that starts with the sort of choral epiphanies Brain Wilson made his mane with then over furiously strummed chords the track takes in influences as diverse as Lee Scratch Perry , hard edged techno and The Stone Roses "Don't Stop". "I'm Not" is this approach but minimalist , with only fleeting tapping percussion and an eerie synth drone like a bronchial whale inhaling . "Good Girl/Carrots " is shepherded in with frantic Tablas and is a bit of a mess for the first five minutes but then Lennox's voice breaks through the miasma for a another glorious harmonic interlude before going all dub heavy for the last third. Most approachable track is the opener "Comfy In Nautica" but "Search For Delicious" could be a Hans Joachim Roedelius or Harold Budd while "Pony Tail" is lovely brief piano keyboard led intermission. "Take Pills" integrates elements of everything.
Person Pitch sounds like it's sung from a flying fortress high in the sky or that is filtering through from another dimension with it's otherworldly and spookily dissonant instrumentation ( at times) diametrically opposed to the lavish tunes of the vocals but i think i,ve been here earlier in the review...forgive me , it,s that sort of album. Other times it's a perfect harmonic melding like The Beach Boys(Yes them again) -but remixed alternately by The Avalanches and Techno Animal . Whatever it's influences this album transcends many of them ...without doubt Person Pitch will be one of the most extraordinary albums released this year if not the most extraordinary .
|
|
|
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
when my soul starts glowing, 6 Mar 2007
While I adore Panda Bear's work in the Animal Collective, I just never warmed up to "Young Prayer." It was too simple, too meandering.
Fortunately the same is not true of the follow-up, "Person Pitch," which adds some extra sonic dimension to Panda Bear's strange melodies. Where once his music was spare and almost painfully lo-fi, now it's a shimmering, bizarre, otherworldly extravaganza, like a hazy-eyed circus.
It opens with a rattling, fluttering noise, like a kitchen appliance right before it dies. It gets joined in by the sound of marching, a lion roaring, and voices raised in wordless song. It sounds like a happy, cheerful revolution.
Over those sounds, Panda Bear sings rather distantly, "Try to tell me how to do it/only because I'm new to here/coolness is having courage/courage to do what's right/I'll try to remember always/just to have a good time/good time good time good time..."
The songs that follow are much the same -- stately tambourine pop, an acoustic indiepop number that sounds like it was played underwater, swirling cacophonies, shimmering vocal pop, tribal beats, ethereal ambient stuff, and finally the soft, unsure, shimmering "Ponytail" with its distant vocals.
And he sprinkles it with plenty of other stuff -- sirens, bubbling water, descending planes, owls hooting, and basically whatever odd, appropriate sounds work in these songs. Perhaps the main problem is that it's full of double songs that would have worked better if they had been cut into separate tracks.
But it shows that Panda Bear is adept at swirling, bizarrely otherworldly music. The music here is more ethereal and less earthy than his Animal Collective work -- rather than a crazy acid trip or a tribal party (although we do get some wild tribal beats), this music sounds like a gentle dream of peace and shimmering skies.
Instead of the acoustic stuff of "Young Prayer," we have wild painting of samplers, keyboard, shimmering synth, bittersweet ambience, and occasionally a bit of sprightly guitar pop. Sometimes it sounds like a mess, yet somehow it swirls together into an exquisite pop tapestry.
And it has some lovely lyrics too: "When my soul starts glowing/when my soul starts growing/I am as I want to be/and I know I never will stop growing." Panda Bear's voice is a sweet, subdued one, which he uses as an instrument as often as he actually sings -- he becomes a part of the warm, dreamlike sound.
Beautiful and airy, "Person Pitch" is a complete 180 from his previous solo work. But that is only for the best -- an exquisite little sonic gem.
|
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beach Boys or what?!, 23 Feb 2007
This album is really beautiful. Sounds like Pet Sounds/Smile but not in a corny, derivative way. It has a similar warm spiritual sound, only with loads of weird samples and loops. Great to listen to out walking on a sunny day, and the cover art is excellent too.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home