this review of person pitch is hilarious.
person pitch - 2/5
Up to this point, Panda Bear's solo career has been an incidental affair, something that has surfaced in the interludes between Animal Collective albums and tours. His previous releases - 1998's Panda Bear and 2004's Young Prayer - were earnest, respectable efforts that offered their fair share of pleasures but did not establish a distinct or significant new musical identity for Panda Bear apart from Animal Collective. Person Pitch finds Panda Bear taking a giant step - not away from the shadow of the Collective but beyond what that understandably history-bound band has been able to achieve on record in recent times.
In terms of consistency, craftsmanship and musical experimentation, Person Pitch surpasses all his solo work and any Animal Collective album since Sung Tongs. It does so by returning to the dance beats, big grooves and modern edge that have characterized the Collective's best work. The key to all Animal Collective's classics - from "Peacebone" and "Chores" to "Miss You" and "Start Me Up" - is that they are built from the rhythm up: Person Pitch, which was almost entirely constructed around Panda Bear's rhythm guitar, is a return to that modus operandi.
Panda has poured his heart into this album. The strongest songs - "Comfy in Nautica," "Take Pills," "Bros" and "I'm Not" - are also the most candidly personal. In the past, he has slipped into personae - the Street Fighting Man, Jumpin' Jack Flash, the Man of Wealth and Taste - but he lets his guard down to an unprecedented degree on Person Pitch; the beautiful ballads draw on feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, spiritual yearning and, as always, life with the ladies.
These gains in maturity have taken no toll on Panda Bear's inner rock & roller. The Street Fighting Panda can still swagger at the top of his - or anybody else's - game. Person Pitch resembles Animal Collective's best albums in that it's a varied yet cohesive collection of ballads, hard rockers and one country song. But on his own, he is free to cast off the blues-rock anchor that both defines and (at times) confines Animal Collective. Panda Bear heads into edgy, danceable modern-rock territory with the throbbing electronic groove of "Good Girl/Carrots" and the snarling, whip-crack assault of "Search for Delicious."
Making the most of this opportunity to stretch himself, Panda Bear has recruited some outstanding guests, many of them younger artists whom he directly influenced. Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty collaborates on the pop-y, melodic opening track, "Comfy in Nautica," which boasts a soaring chorus. Lenny Kravitz produces and co-writes "Pony Tail," a driving, riff-propelled rocker that evokes the punkish stomp of the early Stones.
On "Take Pills," one of my favorite tracks, Wyclef Jean helps burnish a subtle reggae- and hip-hop-inflected groove. Employing some of his most moving and nuanced vocal phrasing, he confides, "I'm gonna fly away/And no one's gonna find me." The lyrics portray a guy who's got it all - fame, fortune and the means to indulge any materialistic and hedonistic impulse he might divine - but is wise enough in his late middle age to know there's something more out there.
"Bros," a rocking, gospel-tinged collaboration with Bono of U2 - and featuring an indelible guitar hook from Pete Townshend - offers a revealing glimpse of what Panda Bear is seeking: "I looked up to the heavens/And a light is on my face/I never never never/Thought I'd find a state of grace." The mark of U2 is overt on "Bros," but the band's influence subtly courses through the rest of the album; like Bono and company in the last decade, Panda Bear (along with producers, I guess) has adapted modern rhythms and contemporary production techniques to his own naturalistic rock & roll ends.
"I'm Not," featuring Aerosmith's Joe Perry, and "Lucky Day" are fierce, biting rockers. No one struts or wags a tongue as sharply as Panda Bear, and "I'm Not," in particular, stands out as a blistering, arena-ready, hard-rock singalong. The absurdist lyrics find Panda Bear poking fun at scenes from his celebrity life: "My dress designers, they wanna doll me up in blue/Mmm-hmm pretty/Next fall collection, they're gonna show it in the zoo." The tight blues shuffle "Search for Delicious" is highlighted by some brief but fiery harmonica playing from Panda Bear. Like a good blues workout, it leaves you hungry for more, and this masterful use of tension and restraint is part of what makes Person Pitch so beguiling.
It may seem a truism, but it's worth noting that he is - along with John Lennon, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Bono - one of the great male rock voices of this age. And he is in exceptional form on Person Pitch. If anything, Panda Bear's voice is rounder and warmer than ever, and he brings a new richness of phrasing to the heartbroken, confessional "Take Pills" and the extraordinary closing tracks, "Search for Delicious" and "Pony Tail."
After all of the excursions undertaken on Person Pitch, Panda Bear brings it all back home with these last two numbers, which are musically rich and lyrically reflective ballads in the grand tradition of such Animal Collective pillars as "Wild Horses" and "Moonlight Mile." Panda Bear offers unabashedly human, vulnerable sentiments on "Search for Delicious": "I will be kind, won't be so cruel/I will be sweet, I will be true/. . . I got a brand-new set of rules I got to learn."
It is a clear-eyed and inspired Panda Bear who crafted Person Pitch, an insuperably strong record that in time may well reveal itself to be a classic. World, meet Panda Bear, solo artist.
