May 27, 2009
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Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest  (hear “Cheerleader”)

Grizzly Bear has taken a real step here towards mainstreaming an esthetic fairly well laid out by Robert Wyatt.  This is an album that will probably turn up on the sound system at Starbucks at some point, but plenty of it is coming out of a tradition of pretty droney, spooked, playfully odd music.  It’s bittersweet to behold, like a child growing up.

The place where this surpasses Animal Collective’s recent effort is in its sonics, its rhythmic stability, its production values in general.  The A.C. has songs, though, which this album does not.

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Tags: Animal Collective Robert Wyatt drone mainstreaming songwriting
May 11, 2009

Panda Bear - Person Pitch

This is an interesting album, to me, because it serves as a transition between the Animal Collective albums of the past, such as Sung Tongs (for crying out loud, what is up with these people and their embarrassing names for everything?), and Merriweather Post Pavilion (embarrassment level reduced by 10%), their album from this year. Animal Collective was, to me, an example of experimenting for experimenting’s sake, so I wrote them off until the hype got up about their latest. They seem to have turned a leaf, as it is in my view driven by values, not means.

Person Pitch ends up behaving like an iteration, one of a series of successive approximations leading up to Merriweather Post Pavilion. I’m curious to see whether MPP itself is a peak - perhaps these people will really tear into the fabric of reality next.

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Tags: animal collective name iterations