Panda Bear - Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper

Panda Bear – Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper

written by: Ameen Wahba January 13, 2015

Release Date: January 13, 2015

Noah Lennox, otherwise known as Panda Bear, is most often recognized as 1/4th of the experimental pop outfit Animal Collective. The sweeping harmonies and cryptic lyrics of the band’s eclectic discography are ever-present on his new release, Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper (stylized as PBVSGR). The album celebrates change more colorfully than his first release in 2004, Young Prayer. Garbled electronic dance jams, stunning piano and harp loops, and dissonant electronic noise (as well as a dog howl here and there), make for an album of light industrial noise and twinkles of ascending frequencies.

The first track, “Sequential Circuits,” introduces the album with sparse instrumentation, a quality maintained through the album’s entirety. Immediately, Sonic Boom’s production is evident and comparable to 2011’s release Tomboy, except the soaring reverb is now wet and percussive. Lennox creates his own “call and response” harmonies on this track, which gives the listener the impression there are a few more people behind the recording, almost reminiscent of The Beach Boys, which Panda Bear is often compared to, gathering around a single microphone.

The first single off of the album, “Mr. Noah,” is somewhat reminiscent of late ’90s hip-hop meshed with an overblown Black Moth Super Rainbow-esque synth. With lines like, “This dog got bit on the leg,” and, “Don’t want to get out of bed/Unless he feels like it’s justified,” listeners can feel his malaise resonating. At the end of each vocal line of the verse Lennox sings in ascending and descending half steps. This small addition to the melody opens up the entire track to the rising and falling expressed in the lyrics.

Following the instrumental interlude “Davy Jones’ Locker,” the track “Butcher Baker Candlestick Maker” has a nice Caribbean beat, but the song doesn’t really go anywhere. At a little over 3 minutes, the track seems a bit drawn out with its woozy repetition and schoolyard play song. Although there are transitions, it just doesn’t feel like it moves. Lackluster, but not a bad song.

“Boy’s Latin” is a just a driving celebration of life.

Despite extreme repetition, the use of bouncing octave vocals fills the song out and makes quick work of the 4:14 minutes. A testament to what can be done with simplicity and redundancy, the “call-and-response” effect fills out any empty space. The departure from Lennox’s quintessential reverb-soaked vocals to a chanting and organic delay on this song dispels the claim some have about “vocal effects masking ability”—Lennox has one of the most impressive vocal ranges in alternative music today.

On “Tropic of Cancer” he channels Scott Walker, crooning lines like, “When they say he’s ill/Laughed it off as if it’s no big deal,” alluding to the mourning of his father. The track seems to be the most direct and honest attack at living up to the latter half of the album title.

After an instrumental, a beautiful electronic-infused sampled piano ballad, and the only true “dance jam” on the album, “Principle Real,” twists through a phaser with a pulsing synth, characteristic of the late 80’s. Although it never really builds and drops, the song swoons, with the addition and reduction of sparse percussion and layered doppler-like synths. The track ends with the repetition of, “You’ll trip again/You’ll trip up again/You’ll get up again,” almost as a positive-self reinforcement that good times come and go.

“Acid Wash” could play over the rolling credits of a historically accurate musical circa 1850, disregarding the experimental warped electronics. With an opening that sounds like a Top-40 station blurb, it somehow seemingly transitions to a triumphant march—an appropriate way to conclude an album with sounds ranging from the sharp and ugly to the horrifyingly beautiful.

Even with it’s slow moments, Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper manages to capture everything listeners want from an album: recognizing the melancholy we all feel and celebrating everything that comes with living through it.