Tongs

so, i know there’s sort of a moratorium on reviewing albums that haven’t officially been released yet. but tomboy’s leaked all over the place, and well before it panda bear released almost every track on the album as a single, and it’s up streaming in its entirety on NPR until its official debut on tuesday. therefore, i think it would be alright for me to expound.

first of all, it’s no person pitch volume 2, which is good in most ways but not so good in a few. the not-so-good parts generally obtain to one thing i feel like panda is guilty of on these tracks. he is a master of simplicity, of paring things down to skeletal sketches: hell, see “my girls” if you need proof of that. but for some reason, on a few tracks here, he succumbed to an urge to tack too many things on to that core simplicity. take “slow motion,” for instance – i first heard it nearly a year ago last summer when it leaked alongside the album’s title track. the single/pre-album version is a thousand times preferable to what we actually get on the real tomboy, which takes that brilliant, eerie little piece of looped-and-relooped ingenuity and botoxes it up with unnecessary pockets of effected dissonance.

perhaps i’m getting too picky now that i’ve delved deeper into music making myself. but fear not as i have plenty of positivity to spin out about this album as well. the part of it that is most surprising is its hearkening back to panda’s pre-person pitch solo work (and the work of animal collective around that time as well) – the way it takes a young prayer-ish cue when the music starts to hug and close in around his voice during several of tomboy’s most powerful tracks, like opener “you can count on me” and the delightful nugget of beach boys-multiplied-by-avey tare joy known as  “surfer’s hymn.”

for all people say their favorite thing about animal collective is the way panda bear and avey tare approach music so differently, some of the best parts of this album are the parts where panda’s channeling his counterpart the most. “friendship bracelet,” which i fear is in certain danger of being overlooked by all but the most careful of listeners, is a bright little romp through the swamp avey took us to on last year’s underappreciated down there. “scheherezade” could have been culled from that record itself, ghostly as it is with its shimmering chimes and its chant-like vocals.

to me, the culmination of everything here and heretofore is “afterburner,” a spooling, hypnotic near-seven-minute ride through the fertile land panda bear has sewn at the intersection of techno, worldbeat, and that trademark animal collective-style ooey-gooey sample-folk beauty. it’s a lovely trance woven out of wavy echoes, plinking percussion, and the midi controlled guitar-strum haziness i now associate with all of this man’s music. a close second is “alsatian darn,” a cross pollination of the track “screens” from animal collective’s oddsac and the much-beloved (and much-parodied) person pitch opener, “comfy in nautica.” its stomps and claps and its multi-layered panda vocals and its gauzy, backlit instrumentation make for some real sublimity.

the bottom line of all this tl;dr is that tomboy might not be the nads-grabbing, blog-inspiring, relevance-showering critical spoogefest that was person pitch, but there’s plenty to love here too. i was happy to be able to hear many of these songs live when i saw mr. lennox at governor’s island last september and they are, for the most part, all the better for how they’ve been fleshed out since. i’m excited to see what animal collective will do next, as all of the parts of their sum have been up to some seriously stellar shit – except geo. he better get on the cool ship before it leaves port.

on another subject entirely, i have had the pleasure of both discovering the music and spending some time in the company of a band from brooklyn called warm ghost. their songs are the songs of unconsciousness; their debut uncut diamond ep is a somnambulatory affair, all slow-burning synths and lulling incantations. it’s a solid piece of work, but the band is encapsulated best when seen live. this past week, i caught them at tt the bear’s place in cambridge and also at a show at wesleyan university’s eclectic house (which i have to point out is a venue that sounds 50 times more awesome online than it is in person, replete as it is with, uh, “sassy” oblivious RAs that like to sit on merch).

live, the already-full sounds of the album become a bonafide wall of sound. from the lowest bass to the most quavery treble, it’s an immersion i haven’t experienced nearly enough with other bands. their sets varied from night to night, but both times i came away feeling mummified, wrapped up tight in the music and the dreamlike state it inspired. though herein lies a big journalistic conflict of interest, i do have to underline the strengths of their visual display. a sensory smorgasbord for sure, but one so intricately planned and executed as to seem a part of the music itself, the dew collecting on the spiderwebs of warm ghost’s sound, refracting everything into a luminescence that lingers on and on.

alright, kiddies. this yarn’s been spun. mama-tongs has to move on to more responsible (i.e., school-related) lawns. but if you’re still tuned in, i encourage you to spin the spit out of this shit. and let me know how you like it, too.