another contender

Posted on November 8th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.

Richard at the Existence Machine was right: I love Person Pitch, the 2007 solo album from Animal Collective co-leader Panda Bear. It's sonically beautiful, and it keeps opening up the louder I turn it; as with Feels, the tunes are memorable, and there are long hypnotic riffs, and it's alternately goofy and sublime. I see that Richard is also a little tired of people making Beach Boys comparisons, and says "The comparison is more conceptual, I think, than anything else. People are more reminded of the Beach Boys than really claiming that Animal Collective actually sound like them." That's probably true, and it's true of Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes, too, but there's still something in the sound that brings the comparison to people's ears before they start analyzing the music, I think. I hear the Incredible String Band in Animal Collective and Panda Bear's music as well, and that's also probably more a conceptual similarity than really sounding like them. As far as sound goes, has anyone compared this to Popul Vuh? The long meditative riffs with the echoey, otherworldly production sound more like Florian Fricke than Brian Wilson. I also hear the big hollow early Magnetic Fields sound in places, particularly on "Ponytail".

4 comments.

Richard

Comment on November 8th, 2007.

Ha! Excellent.

With respect to the whole sounds like/conceptual thing, you're right, there is something there. I think I was just weary of always seeing the words "Beach Boys" or "Brian Wilson" in reviews. Yeah, I can see it a little, but move on to something else (or, you know, stop basing reviews on all the other reviews you've seen).

You mention Popul Vuh--I've been wanting to check them out, but their discography is so distant and large that I'm unsure where to start. I downloaded one song each from Aguirre and Letzte Tage, Letzte Nachte, both of which I remember liking....

(Also, while I'm here, I think you'd have to have an opinion on this: I've been obsessed lately with Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. What is the best Neko Case album to try next?)

Scraps

Comment on November 8th, 2007.

I wish I had more Popul Vuh. I lived in a household twenty years ago that had a fair amount of Popul Vuh on vinyl, but it wasn't connecting with me so much back then (neither was Can). Now I have only a few things, and I gather their discography is erratic, both in sound and in quality, but I love Letzte Tage, Letzte Nachte and Sei Still, Wisse Ich Bin, so I mean to pick up more.

With Neko Case, probably the best thing for you to do is work backwards, so I'd recommend Blacklisted next. It's a transition between her earlier straighter country sound and the more idiosyncratic sound of Fox Confessor.

ethan

Comment on November 8th, 2007.

Goodness--I've been kind of neglecting Animal Collective, but now I see I've got to stop that.

Richard

Comment on November 9th, 2007.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Speaking of Neko Case--I just noticed that Pitchfork has reviews of the reissues of her albums today, so I poked around reading about her on the site. It's remarkable how nit-picky the review of Fox Confessor is, meanwhile certain indie bands du jour so often get by with gushing reviews that glide over all kinds of glaring weaknesses. Eh, nothing new, I suppose...

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