Panda Bear Tomboy. Somehow this record is very much smaller than the last Panda Bear record. It is very similar to the last record. But we tire of the lack of novelty quickly. We are on to more novel forms of novelty already. I love this album. I love Panda Bear. I enjoy his interviews when he earnestly proclaims his desire to make something worthwhile enough to attract attention and allow him to provide for his family. It's the smallness that charms. First track is a repeating bit of rhythm, some found sound samples and his overachieving voice. Is it overachieving only by technology? I am not certain. Second track. The songs are much shorter than on the previous record. Sonic Boom produced this album and he has fingerprints left as smudges in places conspicuous and others less so. On this track the repeating motif on the guitar would not sound out of place on a Sonic Boom/Spectrum record circa 1992. It might just now, now when Sonic Boom has squandered the good will fostered by his legions of snack cake/drug dealer/trance imbibing aficionados. His fortune is much reduced. There are the rumours that he makes it down the hill occasionally with copies of the Spacemen 3 Rugby recordings to finance his "lifestyle". Is it still his "lifestyle"? Unknown. I always thought that both he and Jason Pierce looked terrifically fit for heroin addicts. And Sonic Boom had that haircut. I wanted that haircut. I achieved it once, for a brief bursting moment in 1993. But it fell away. This was the last time I was ever truly happy. This track is like the first, repetitive, hypnotic and awesome. It is all awesome. Third track Slow Motion. This is one of the ones he released before the album and I was much dismayed over. it has had a reworking and it fits in much more cohesively as part of a flexible whole instead of jettisoned out on some jetty exposed to the elements and the cold penumbra of space. It is raining again. After the rain there exists the still silhouettes against and overcast sky, the buildings and trees and hopes and dreams. Stillness is oppressive. When the wind chimes through the catalpa trees and the honey locust trees it signifies movement and change and expression. The stillness encases all of life in a bound, spiny memory box. Nothing exists except on the border between the existence within and the dreamed of existence that lies just out of reach. My boss straddles this line. He has a new Volvo. Repetition is difficult. Sonic Boom mainly got it wrong. Except on Recurring. Side one of Recurring-the Sonic Boom side-is genius. Absolutely. J Spaceman's side, not really. he has the truncated bit of Feel So Sad which is amazing sure and Hypnotized but after that-meh. He may have already had half of Lazer Guided Melodies in the can. Who can be sure, they could have been recording in a studio demarcated with an impregnable dividing wall of saran wrap with a full spread of snack cakes on one side and syringes filled with Sheep collagen on the other. One of them has a chin. Surfer's Hymn, a bit more propulsive, more "hymnal". His voice is earnest. He seems entirely earnest. Animal Collective has more the feel of an athletic endeavour than an exercise in hipster ennui. Am I misreading these things? Heart comes the human heart rate rhythm so common to Animal Collective records. It is the Panda Bear heart that sets the tempo in Animal Collective. This is more primal. He has a heart more centered and carried closer to the surface than his colleagues in Animal Collective. Next track, the songs are so much shorter. Last Night At the Jetty, doo-wop vocals well forward in the mix, an uncoordinated sample providing the melody and distant garage door claps for percussion. His voice is multi-tracked and it feels like a choir of routinely modest young men. Did it take ages to create these tracks? What is the process? I would imagine that he makes something more lush and intricate and busy and that the art is the excision. Dissecting the prolapse and witnessing the rebirth. The lyrics? Insignificant. Surely his family rises to the fore and is utmost in his mind, he's a technological busker counting on the good will of those more magnanimous than myself to come through. I will do my part by giving to the cause, I will learn the Portuguese word for inspiring someday in remembrance of the greatness that is Panda Bear. Panda Bear in Portuguese is Panda Urso? Is it not? must consult my Tavares, Mello & Grunewald guide to Portuguese in order to be certain. Why is is that I am on a first name basis with so many dictators? Unknown. From Bainimarama to Nazarbayev I have their name at beckon call in my consciousness. It might be the fault of the Economist which in spite of their silly opinions on climate change and tax increases is still mainly right in identifying dictators when people like Bob Stanley have created shrines to them out of Helen Love 7" records. Drone, was this a collaboration with Sonic Boom? I need an aimless, meandering bit of loveliness to fill in the middle four minutes of my mostly marvelous record. I will call the man who gave us Forever Alien! Enough about Sonic Boom. I won't mention when I saw him live in New York by himself with his keys taped to the floor, his fringe looking magnificent and his voice resembling Gabriel. I won't. You will have to imagine the most serene moment of your life ever and then feel disappointed when I tell you it can't compare. After Drone. back to the cheerleading pop songs. I know people who love Panda Bear but do not love Animal Collective. His heart is many chambered and for his own records he shrinks it away from that of a highly prized heart of an athlete and it turns sentimental and romantic and now with the percussion coming from the floor being stomped under feet of the Williamsburg masses. I am having visions of silk screened flyers, possibly created by members of the Axemen visiting Panda Bear as an homage from the knowing forebears who he must deeply respect, and the Williamsburg types and Taylor Swift seeing these silk screened flyers next to gig posters for the Drums and a congregation of nothingness and irony and a march in place to MGMT or Joanna Newsom records and a surreptitious microphone hidden beneath floorboards, underneath the parquet. Next track, a piano, field recordings, lovely voice, Scheherazade. In just over one week I will visit the swimming pool where Johnny Weissmuller once dipped his toe. I haven't been in a swimming pool in a very long time. 20 years? Possibly. I remember being in a swimming pool and being terrified of the contacts on my eyes floating away on the surface of the swimming pool and being unable to circle underneath and to surface in perfect alignment to recapture my lenses. This is a bit like a Verve b-side, a bit Endless Life or a b-side to Blue. I spent a few hours watching live videos of Verve on youtube a few weeks ago. When Richard Ashcroft was muffled by the maelstrom, when John Leckie took Nick Mccabe by the hand and they opened a pathway to miracles. And then Richard Ashcroft had an acoustic guitar and a quiver full of laments and bad advice. oh dear. Is Avey Tare the Richard Ashcroft to Panda Bear's Nick Mccabe? No. I like Avey Tare. I don't like his solo records. But were not the first few Animal Collective records solo Avey Tare records? I am not knowing enough. This track feels like a gospel experience, I am reminiscing about my life spent in a church in Warren, Michigan when the congregation rose as one and sang hosannas to the lord. It sounded nothing at all like this, to our detriment it would appear. My parents once considered the ministry as an appropriate occupation for my brother. My oldest brother was a heathen. I was unconvinced. Mostly this track is constructed around the voice. Layers of his voice, mostly inflexible, it's sound manipulations more than emotional registry. He moves my heart by the gracefulness of the construction, by the isolation, by the oneiric invocations. It is truly too lovely for me to give justice to. Will the Belle and Sebastian fans who imbibe the toot with Belle and Sebastian also have this cd on their floating shelf above their turntable? I was meant to camp out in front of the new Ikea store in order to win a new sofa. I did not. The first 38 brave campers will win a sofa. I hope it is a nice sofa. This track is more Beach Boys-y teenage symphonies to Jobs. His voice at the top of his register, but restrained, the cacophony is imaginary, the fragile construction is inconspicuous. Is this the record to play for seduction? You could establish a meaningful connection with a meaningful rhythm to this track, the percussion softly escalates your pulse until a mild form of exertion turns to a conflagration of passion. Is Panda Bear sexy? Unknown. My sex is indeterminate. Heart rate percussion muffled beneath woolen duffle coats and textured scarves. So nice. I could listen to Panda Bear and recreate all of the times when I didn't feel insecure and inadequate and feel that sense of invincibility one should feel when you are 19 and the world is at your beckon. The world never answered my call or I remained mute. Unknown. Panda Bear has stepped into the breach and offered his soul to the world at large and I applaud most heartily. If only I could offer a real reply instead of counterfeit insouciance. Last track. his voice, multi-tracked, out of phase, dreaminess. Amazingness. Last track respiteness. In the final epiphany of Walter White I am hoping that this track is the soundtrack as the world comes to heel and in with very tiny fingers and too many toes to count we arrive at the moment in time when Brian Cox may proclaim our love as more lovely than anything you can imagine. The universe in a flatly monotonic outreach. Chocolate absorbed through my skin. The atmosphere of language. Hosanna.