Buoys - Panda Bear: Review
Panda Bear
is the alias for Noah Lennox, one of the principal members of Baltimore psych-pop revolutionaries Animal Collective. The group has had a steady output of fantastic experimental music for the entirety of the 2000's and into the 2010's featuring numerous mixtures of the groups four main members, a lot of the projects heavily featuring the creative input of Panda Bear. But as Animal Collective has recently run into a series of just so-so releases Panda Bear's consistency as a solo artist has shined. Through Person Pitch the underrated Tomboy and most recently Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper he executes with consistency under his own name.
Review By Lavender:
Panda Bear's 2007 album Person Pitch is an absolute masterpiece, the songwriting alone is nothing short of genius and its vicinity to the similarly fantastic Animal Collective album Strawberry Jam makes it even more impressive. So after I enjoyed Tomboy the underrated and overlooked follow-up in 2011 and his acclaimed Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper then it should equate that I would be very excited for this album. Its two singles took such different directions artistically that I really had no idea what to expect, but what I can say is that if you were hoping Panda would drop something unique then you definitely got your wish, even if not every experiment is a huge success.
Its opener Dolphin is one of the two singles, both of which I enjoyed. Comparatively between the two Dolphin is the much more experimental and wild side of the two that is a wild song full of excellently worked vocal effects and a great instrumental loop that sounds much more forward thinking than almost anything we've heard on recent Animal Collective material. Token on the other hand is a much easier to swallow song but don't count that against it as it's great vocal performance and it's driving crescendo make it another excellent moment. But not all is so consistent.
I Know I Don't Know and the albums closer Home Free suffer from varying degrees of boring-itis as both are vocally dominated tracks, yet seem more random at times than interesting, even given the effects layered over Panda's vocals. Home Free in particular is close to being a solid song but desperately just needs a little bit more added to its formula. Inner Monologue is a song I actually enjoyed but its instrumental takes just a little too long to develop and could use the energy it reaches by the end to start a little sooner. And thankfully that's pretty much all of the tracks I have complaints about.
Crescendo starts off a little rough but really takes shape in its second half and leaves on a really solid note, and Master proved to be one of my favorite tracks in the entire album as the light airy instrumental is instantly captivating and its some of the most lovely vocals and effect work on the whole project, making it a clear highlight.
The title track Buoys is a decent song with a catchy refrain that hangs in the background but is a pretty important piece to the flow of this album which I have to say i enjoyed a lot. And that leaves us with Cranked yet another excellent tune that surprised me a lot with its catchyness and contained some of the most memorable lyrics the album has to offer.
Buoys is a strange experience from start to finish and even though it doesn't necessarily command anything out of you, letting yourself fall into tracks like Token, Master and Cranked results in a positively indulgent experience that I was more than happy to go on time and time again. 7/10
Its opener Dolphin is one of the two singles, both of which I enjoyed. Comparatively between the two Dolphin is the much more experimental and wild side of the two that is a wild song full of excellently worked vocal effects and a great instrumental loop that sounds much more forward thinking than almost anything we've heard on recent Animal Collective material. Token on the other hand is a much easier to swallow song but don't count that against it as it's great vocal performance and it's driving crescendo make it another excellent moment. But not all is so consistent.
I Know I Don't Know and the albums closer Home Free suffer from varying degrees of boring-itis as both are vocally dominated tracks, yet seem more random at times than interesting, even given the effects layered over Panda's vocals. Home Free in particular is close to being a solid song but desperately just needs a little bit more added to its formula. Inner Monologue is a song I actually enjoyed but its instrumental takes just a little too long to develop and could use the energy it reaches by the end to start a little sooner. And thankfully that's pretty much all of the tracks I have complaints about.
Crescendo starts off a little rough but really takes shape in its second half and leaves on a really solid note, and Master proved to be one of my favorite tracks in the entire album as the light airy instrumental is instantly captivating and its some of the most lovely vocals and effect work on the whole project, making it a clear highlight.
The title track Buoys is a decent song with a catchy refrain that hangs in the background but is a pretty important piece to the flow of this album which I have to say i enjoyed a lot. And that leaves us with Cranked yet another excellent tune that surprised me a lot with its catchyness and contained some of the most memorable lyrics the album has to offer.
Buoys is a strange experience from start to finish and even though it doesn't necessarily command anything out of you, letting yourself fall into tracks like Token, Master and Cranked results in a positively indulgent experience that I was more than happy to go on time and time again. 7/10
