“Person Pitch”
Panda Bear
Paw Tracks Records
4 Paws Out Of 5
It would be easy to sum up Noah Lennox’s third solo album ““ “Person Pitch,” released under Lennox’s moniker, Panda Bear ““ by name-dropping Brian Wilson, calling it a masterpiece that came out of mixing the most impressive aspects of the songwriter’s music into a single coherent album.
With a similarly sugary voice enhanced by reverb, the omnipresence of Wilson-esque pop harmonies, and a penchant for the psychedelic, Lennox does share some of his paramount talents with the bold Beach Boy. However, thanks to a masterful command over appropriating samples to flesh out his hypnotic acoustic songs, “Person Pitch” is a wholly unique work from the Animal Collective member.
The opener, “Comfy in Nautica,” starts off with samples of a gate opening and a giant roar. To follow this ambitious introduction, Lennox’s mellifluous yet powerful vocals about courage and winning invoke happy feelings of partaking in communal rituals, though the song is actually about maintaining good times.
“Take Pills,” a mixture of Velvet Underground tambourine and industrial samples, somehow sounds like it was recorded underwater. Appropriately enough, Lennox sings “Wake from your sleep” before quickening the pace of the song. Though the warmth of the track comes in medias res, the cheery mood complements Lennox’s subsequent plea of “I don’t want us to take pills anymore.”
“Bros,” the album’s trippy tour de force, captures Lennox’s love for his friends and his newfound sunny disposition upon moving to Lisbon, Portugal, and becoming a husband and father. Like the song’s video, where the most discernable superimposed features are feline faces and a person showering amid a blend of colors and other seemingly arbitrary images, the song itself is a kaleidoscope of sounds and feelings, and features acoustic guitars and samples ranging from Cat Stevens to owls hooting.
Another track, “I’m Not,” is the album’s most ambient and least dichotomic song, seemingly straight out of a hazy dream. However, “Good Girl/Carrots” is the perfect showcase of the success of Lennox’s experimentation and willingness to explore different moods in the confines of a single track.
The song starts off chaotic, with a beep that sounds eerily similar to the hatch beep in the show “Lost,” is looped with repeated “good girl” lyrics, tribal tablas, the sounds of waves crashing, and occasional Radiohead-like effects. Gradually, the album’s overall poppy and warm sounds creep in and finally take over to produce the album’s most tropical and light-hearted moments.
Panda Bear’s last album, the sparse “Young Prayer,” did not contain any of the elements that make this album so inviting and adventurous. While the previous album served as a eulogy for Lennox’s deceased father, this album displays the musician overcoming the absences of his life ““ his parent and even his band ““ in order to live a whole life and produce a full sound, made possible by his wish that his soul “never would stop growing.”