Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Person Pitch, June 6, 2007
Panda Bear's Person Pitch is proof positive why it's necessary for Animal Collective to remain a "collective" rather than a permanent band: the members just have too many ideas. Granted, they leapfrogged from style to style on each of their albums anyway, but Animal Collective drummer Panda Bear's latest sounds like the work of one man making music on his own terms, and reflects his own current state of mind. See, Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) just moved to ultra-laid-back Lisbon, and sure enough, Person Pitch sounds like the Beach Boys' California love filtered through a strange exoticism that's easy to associate with a place like Portugal. It retains Animal Collective's ebullient, idealistic attitude, but it's more low-key and atmospheric: quiet drum machines and plinked instruments awash in a psychedelic cloud. And, as you would expect from an animal in the Collective, the vocals are treated in wonderfully creative ways; the fact that Panda Bear sounds uncannily like Brian Wilson is just a really big bonus.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magic Mushroom Music, March 29, 2007
Like another reviewer on here, I was not all that impressed with Panda Bear's first solo record, Young Prayer. It was overly simple and lo-fi. There's not much that I can say about it that hasn't been said before. However, with Person Pitch, Panda Bear has created an amazing audio tapestry of hazy samples and sun-drenched guitarscapes. If I had to reduce this review to as few words as possible, I would say this: Fennesz's Endless Summer meets the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds in Animal Collective's basement. I hesitate to mention AC here but this album is definitely reminiscent of the more melodic parts of Feels. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is more accessible on the first listen than any AC release.
There are only 7 tracks here, but there is no filler on the album and two of the tracks exceed the 10-minute mark. It opens with Comfy In Nautica - a repeated choral loop on top of simple 1-2-3-4 factory-noise percussion that floats underneath Noah's (Panda's real name) nostalgic singing. The next track, Take Pills, reminds me of Banshee Beat from Feels in that it begins slow and lurching but becomes upbeat about 3 minutes into it. "I don't want for us to take pills anymore..." is the catchy refrain to this one. Next comes Bros, the album's centerpiece. It starts with the sound of an owl hooting, but jumps into the melody very quickly. It desolves into lovely, hazy AC territory about halfway through, and the owl comes back for some background vocal work.
There are four other tracks that come next. I'm not going to try to go through each of them here, mostly because I fear my adjectives will become redundant. But if you enjoy the first three tracks, you're most likely going to enjoy the last four. Every track on here has a similar sound and feel to it, but they each stand out on their own. I highly recommend this to fans of AC, who most likely do not need my recommendation, but also to people who feel like AC is maybe a bit too out there for them at times.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Try, July 21, 2007
Thank heavens for Noah Lennox. His follow-up to the excellent Young Prayer LP is its complete inverse: maximal where the prior was minimal, cheerful instead of mournful, more influenced by dub and electronica than folk. And yet both albums are great.
Person Pitch begins with "Comfy in Nautica", which both defines the album's sound and provides an accessible jumping-off point, like any good opener should. To get an idea of what the sound is like this time around, picture Brian Wilson singing in the middle of a car factory somewhere in the middle of Africa, with drums and noises from outside sometimes working their way into the mix, and the occasional guest appearance by some thick, dubby basslines.
"Comfy in Nautica" itself is pretty simple; some clattering industrial percussion, a towering looped vocal sample and Lennox's heavily reverbed vocals. These same elements show up repeatedly elsewhere on the album, but thankfully there's much more to it than just that. Take, for instance, the ferocious tabla opener to "Good Girl/Carrots", the second of two twelve-minute epics on the album, and one of my favorite tracks. This is followed by a loping, easy section. The lyrics here seem to reference Mitch Hedburg, before breaking off into a gentle debate with a music snob who's attempting to put Lennox down. Then the track drifts underwater, accompanied by chimes and heavy bass as Panda exhorts us to "Take a risk just for yourselves/and wade into the deepest of the oceans". The track ends on an exultant note, the shimmering chimes drawing it to its close.
In fact, I'm pretty sure Person Pitch is worth buying for "Carrots" alone. But other tracks like the whirling, giddy guitar jam of "Bros" and the smooth echoes of "I'm Not" are equally elating. It's easily the happiest album released this year, and probably the most conventionally listenable thing any member of Animal Collective has ever created.
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