Collected Animals

Nice review From FLOOD MAGAZINE

Spoiler: show

Panda Bear & Sonic Boom
Reset
DOMINO
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Reset is an album that resembles a musical toy with its mature lyrical edges covered in gobs of neon-colored Play-Doh. It largely avoids the prickliness of other pandemic releases by rubbing itself in sugary melodies and production, while repeat listens reveal it has a sharp emotional story to tell under the surface—ominous deaths occur on “Go On,” and “Edge of the Edge” alludes to strange fruit with a hidden rot and someone sick as a dog digging through trash. These multilayered and colorful songs flow from Noah Lennox, the psych-pop adventurer best known as Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, and the former Spacemen 3 alt-rocker and compendious producer Pete Kember (a.k.a. Sonic Boom).

Bells, Beach Boys melodies, Latin American percussion gourds, and monster-under-the-bed electronic rumbles charge the Peter Pan heart of this collaborative record. “Gettin’ to the Point,” the tropical opener, feels like the first jump into a warm, aquamarine body of water. Its bright acoustic guitar loop is infectious, recalling Panda Bear’s Person Pitch era. “Go On” and “Everyday” continue the summery streak and push Kember toward the mic, singing “Give it to me” like a mantra on the kaleidoscopic former track, while the latter sees him dive-bombing his airy baritone verses over sequencers, pattering percussion, and slide whistles.

Deeper into the tracklist, Lennox’s psychedelic melody on “Whirlpool” is twisted like a lime over a cold drink by Kember’s eddying production, while “Edge of the Edge” is a quintessential Panda Bear track that encapsulates the kernel of the idea Kember struck upon with his musical partner during the cabin fever days of their 2020 lockdown (it also just sounds straight up like a Beach Boys song). Kember wanted to take the ornate intros to classic tracks from the likes of Eddie Cochran, The Everly Brothers, or even The Belle Stars’ “Iko Iko,” from Rain Man, and really loop the hell out of them in one- or two-chord chunks for Reset. “Edge of the Edge” has a perfect musical intro loop for this, with its telephone-dialing beep and deep-bass doo-wop bump. It’s undeniably catchy from the jump, and works like a musical barber shop pole that can stretch skyward forever.

As the album moves along, its bright loops begin to elongate as the songs become more diffused and intricate. “In My Body” and “Danger” serve as stately and welcome comedowns from earlier musical flights of fancy, while “Livin’ in the After” is this pair’s Van Dyke Parks–like bauble, bursting with strings, rumbling synths, and galloping percussion. You admire its main melody as it glints in the sunshine and down through a canopy of Sonic Boom’s lively instrumentation. The final track on the album keeps the energy at skywriting levels: “Everything’s Been Leading to This” races along as a fitful electro-pop bookend for an album that similarly started with a sugar rush.

Reset is a pop album full of surprises. Seek it out, slip into it for a while, and play in its balmy environment again when you need a restart on your day. We all deserve some bright musical Play-Doh to blunt the sharper edges of adulthood, and the Panda Bear and Sonic Boom factory is fully functional.

This is probably the warmest atmosphere on here in thirteen or fourteen years.

I put it down to me not being a fucking twat any more.

Cheers Sonic.

Stan wrote:

This is probably the warmest atmosphere on here in thirteen or fourteen years.

I put it down to me not being a fucking twat any more.

Cheers Sonic.

Awwwww....pfff.. I do ike this Stan a lot more personally, for sure . Actually , it's kind of a pleasure ....
I deleted SOOOOOO many replies to you in years gone by .... was good for me to learn to let it go . You were a learning curve I benefited from .
We all have opinions like we all have arseholes . Mines never gonna be as important to you as it is to me & vice versa .
That's a sweet thing to put out there & I appreciate it a lot buddy .

Oh yeah ! Talking of instrumentals ........ : )
lets tip a glass to Joe . One of Noah & my brother bonding bands xp

Provanities wrote:

Man, just went through a breakup last week and my soul is crushed. These two jams are tiding me over and Friday could not possibly be better timed. Thank you Noah and Pete for doing some lifesaving with this new music. Can't wait.

I feel you man, I just got out a 7 year relationship a few months back and living alone for the first time has been so strange. It gets better and you get stronger. I can't wait to wake up on Friday and blast this album in my car going to work. Got to love the groovy things

Stan wrote:

This is probably the warmest atmosphere on here in thirteen or fourteen years.

I put it down to me not being a fucking twat any more.

Cheers Sonic.

We all have opinions like we all have arseholes . Mines never gonna be as important to you as it is to me & vice versa .
That's a sweet thing to put out there & I appreciate it a lot buddy

Sonic boom wrote:

Stan wrote:

This is probably the warmest atmosphere on here in thirteen or fourteen years.

I put it down to me not being a fucking twat any more.

Cheers Sonic.

We all have opinions like we all have arseholes . Mines never gonna be as important to you as it is to me & vice versa .
That's a sweet thing to put out there & I appreciate it a lot buddy

I think it's pretty defeatist to claim that your arsehole will never be as important to Stan as his is to him. Life's short and things change fast and there's always hope

it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in

Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to cave in

they also stole everyone's thing about how it sounds like The Beach Boys

scrambledgreggs wrote:

they also stole everyone's thing about how it sounds like The Beach Boys

lol it's so funny to me that after years of critics saying everything they do sounds like the beach boys, now that when they actually released something that has some actual beach boys vibes, it's made it feel weird to point it out lol. some boy who cried wolf shit. 'yeah okay, i'm sure it sounds like the beach boys kid, just like centipede sounded like pet sounds." i swear to god, you could dig up a review of danse that says like 'noah 'good vibrations' lennox's soaring brian wilson vocals on another white singer bring us right back to the summer of '67'

ah fuck I thought this was out today!

give it to me

give it to me

give it to me

give it to me

give it to me

Also , we have some extra juicy stuff we cooked for you I think you're gonna like as part of the RESET party .... That I think you'll enjoy ....A slow but sweet dessert .....

Hope u can join us tomorrow eve ! And send us a pic or a vid of u partying !

the youtube video says 8pm eastern standard time, so, see you guys tomorrow evening!

oh helllll yea. when I first heard I hear a new world i was blown away and also thought "i bet panda loves this too"

i was lucky to find one of those "produced by joe meek" compilation records. this is my favorite track from it



thanks for the tunes and engagement and stories and love boom! seriously cannot wait for tomorrow night

tdegenaro wrote:

the youtube video says 8pm eastern standard time, so, see you guys tomorrow evening!

Uhhhggg, I wish I could join in on this but I have to see this little band called Animal Collective... Geezz what a drag... but really, I do wish I could have both!

Hey Boom, did you ever talk to Noah about if he likes his acoustsonic guitar? Been thinking of getting one for a while, seems like the versatile morsel I've been craving.

Fuck me this is sounding amazing. Can't wait for tonight. I'm taking my wife out for dinner but should be back in time.

Edit just seen it starts at 1am UK time so hopefully I'll just have the Bandcamp/Domino release at that point. Looking forward to the discussions and reacks on here! X


Edit edit

Sonic, I'm sorry to have given you cause to write and delete posts, that's a moderation I've never really learned! But moreso, I've certainly never wanted to cause any upset or even written anything intended for you or the band members to read, aside from offering to be AC's creative director - no salary required just travel expenses and maybe a sandwich. I won't meddle or anything, I'll just say 'finished' when a song is in its best state and they can go and record that while it's freshest. Please put in a good word for me.

To be completely honest, I've always relished the untempered outpouring of both joy and frustration on here. If I can't lose my mind about a chord change (or a chord change change) with this little community, there's nobody else who will understand. And I think it's the element of the forum being a quaint, forgotten corner nowadays which really appeals and which still makes it special to me. You can let it all out on here and people understand and give you the benefit of the doubt or know that you're kind of joking. (I thought your recent interview struck a few chords on that note.) Within this baboon sanctuary, I am most unafraid to bare my red arse, for better and worse.

I wish you guys all the very best with the album and I hope you sell loads of records and get the plaudits you deserve. X

Not really a poster here but this is most excited I've ever been for a Panda Bear project. I can't get enough of Edge of the Edge, and all the reviews make it seem like this will be right up my alley.

One of my favourite Panda songs ever is Walkabout, a track he did with Atlas Sound. If Reset is a full album of that vibe, I'll be beside myself.

You familiar with Walkabout Pete?

It appears to have freebirded

first time poster here and nice to see all the happiness around the new PBSB collab
thanks for being kind sonic boom! can't wait for reset party today

ps: i don't remember in which review someone spoke about latin american sounds on reset so sonic boom, did u listen something from these plains that influenced while doing the album?