It\u2019s been four years since Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, last released a solo album. Now with Tomboy<\/i>, he\u2019s gone solo once again and we finally get to see how his band\u2019s recent successes have affected his own music. Unfortunately, it hasn\u2019t changed for the better. If anything, Tomboy<\/i> is a regression compared to what came before. It\u2019s absolutely drenched in reverb and delay to the detriment of the audio fidelity. Animal Collective\u2019s music also uses a lot of reverb, enough so that it\u2019s one of their most characteristic elements, but they always keep it to a healthy level that only enhances the music. Here, it only serves to distract and muddy the songs.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The majority of the music consists of a heavily affected guitar backed by a bare-bones drum machine. A few tracks throw some synthesizers into the mix, which add a lot of character to the songs, and I wish there were more since the guitar tone barely changes through the whole album. On Person Pitch<\/i>, Panda Bear relied on samplers in a big way and that had a major role in varying the album\u2019s sound and making it interesting to listen to as a whole. Tomboy<\/i> doesn\u2019t do anything in particular to keep the album interesting in long stretches; it\u2019s just one reverby chug after another.<\/p>\n
The vocals are buried in the mix and the lyrics are almost completely indecipherable through the entire album. That\u2019s not a problem necessarily \u2013 one could argue that this isn\u2019t the type of music where the vocals need to be upfront \u2013 but the lush, layered harmonies Lennox creates seem to demand at least some degree of vocal clarity. There just isn\u2019t enough going on in the instrumentation and arrangements to really demand your attention if the vocals aren\u2019t doing the job. <\/p>\n
Thankfully, Panda Bear\u2019s innate gift for melody remains intact. All of the songs in the first half of the album are very hummable for sure. I\u2019ve had \u201cYou Can Count On Me\u201d stuck in my head ever since I first heard it, same goes for \u201cSlow Motion,\u201d \u201cSurfer\u2019s Hymn,\u201d and several others. The primary issue I have with the songwriting is that in most cases, Lennox doesn\u2019t do anything with these catchy melodies once he\u2019s established them. If you hear the first thirty seconds of any of these tunes, you\u2019ve basically heard the whole thing. Everything could have been so much better if only he fleshed out his ideas a little more. \u201cLast Night At The Jetty\u201d easily snags the position of best track on this album for me. Not only does it have a stunningly beautiful melody, but it develops extremely well as it progresses, one of the only songs to do so.<\/p>\n
Early versions of over half of the album\u2019s tracks were released on singles before the album\u2019s release. The new versions of these songs are across-the-board improvements from the originals. So those who already have all the singles should probably still grab the album. But that\u2019s pretty much the only added value since the four tracks that didn\u2019t appear on the singles are all among the weakest material on the whole album. \u201cAfterburner\u201d initially seems the most interesting of these but as it goes on it just repeats the same backing track and the same non-melody over and over. A few things fade in and out of the mix at times but it\u2019s too little too late at that point.<\/p>\n
I know Lennox probably labored over this music for months, yet it still sounds as if he just lazily recorded a few instruments and put some \u201cx-treme reverb\u201d preset on everything. It just doesn\u2019t work, and flat out wreaks many tracks that are otherwise quite good. The melodies get obscured, arrangements get muddled, and the rhythms loose definition, resulting in nearly an entire album of samey-sounding aural mush. Avey Tare\u2019s recent solo album Down There<\/i> suffered from the exact opposite problem; the production and effects used on his album were stellar but the songs weren\u2019t particularly interesting. Lennox is a fine songwriter but he can\u2019t pair his songs with compelling sounds. It\u2019s no wonder then that the two pair so well together in Animal Collective where their strengths cancel out their individual weaknesses. Tomboy<\/i> isn\u2019t a bad record per-se, but coming from a man at the forefront of modern independent music it does seem rather slight. I\u2019ve read comments online that Panda Bear sounds like The Beach Boys played from the next room over, and while that\u2019s far from a perfect comparison, there is a grain of truth there. However, when it comes right down to it I really just want to be in that room hearing that music firsthand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":30644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8698],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-42314","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-panda-bear","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42314"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}