![]() This tactic recalls a surprising touchstone: Is This It. If it seems to lack ambition, Kember and Lennox compensate by carving away ideas in order to arrive at a sharp point. Reset is refined, concentrated, a focused burst of reggae-esque exultation. It makes us wonder: Should we be bothered that the record’s best moments can feel cherry-picked from Person Pitch and Merriweather Post Pavilion? Those albums were both sprawling and deceptively formless, oozing out of their constraints like different varieties of colored foam. Reset slips from back-to-basics, handclap-laden pop to new peaks in the familiar range of Lennox’s music. The irony is that the lyric is the title of a Troggs single he sampled for the song’s backbone: The demanding boy is just psyched about his record collection. “Give it to me,” chants Kember on “Go On” with the incidental charm of a kid messing around with a tape recorder for the first time. #Sonic boom pingas crack#More than the content of his words, we notice the way Lennox wraps his mouth around them-“You take a swig and then you take a crack,” he chatters on the chipper, even humorous “Edge of the Edge,” emphasizing crack to coax out its tactile vowel-as well as the repetitive mantras that evoke Sonic Boom’s recent solo albums. The lyrics are opaque, impressionistic, and hallucinogenic. Reset invites these lofty comparisons, and pulses with life both because and in spite of them. The harmonically delectable “In My Body” builds to a descending refrain that numbers among the most gorgeous vocal hooks in a career brimming with them: “Stuck up on a branch,” Lennox sighs, “And I can’t get down.” This song initiates the album’s unexpectedly chilled-out core, a suite of tracks-“In My Body,” “Whirlpool,” and “Danger”-that will remind many of the slower, more relaxed songs on the back half of the epochal Merriweather Post Pavilion. He repeats “drown” on the terrific “Whirlpool” like some teen idol of the doo-wop era. However symbiotic he and Kember have become, the record’s surface is pure Panda Bear. They incorporate analog filters, bass, güiro, sleigh bells, a dialed phone, and abundantly sampled acoustic guitar, which harkens back to the sunniness of Person Pitch highlight “Bros.” Reset is easily the most natural and intuitive Lennox has sounded since then. #Sonic boom pingas portable#Kember and Lennox’s gear reflects this pan-generational perspective-a vintage harmonizer introduced in the mid ’70s, a lo-fi synth designed in the ’80s, the portable OP-1 that has become ubiquitous in the last decade. The record is a paean to the many eras of music lovers who have sifted through their stacks of vinyl and heard something surprising in sounds that have reverberated so long in the culture they threatened to turn trite. Reset’s generous spirit encompasses the Elephant 6 collective and Cornershop’s gleeful ripostes to the skeptical ’90s the radical inclusivity of the Avalanches and Daft Punk and of course some of the echoey sweetness that both Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear found in the Beach Boys in the late ’00s. The duo’s gradual stylistic convergence highlights an unusual collaborative mode: Dissolving hierarchy, they cohabitate common ground as artistic siblings.Įssential to their take on the ’60s are subsequent decades’ interpretations and revivals of that pivotal era. In interviews, they speak about each other frequently and fondly, as amped about their friendship as their work together. ![]() ![]() A denizen of Lisbon since 2004, Lennox was among the reasons Kember moved to Portugal in 2016. Sitting in the producer’s chair, Kember introduced gurgling drones to Panda Bear’s next two records, 2011’s Tomboy and 2015’s Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, and Lennox lent his high tenor to 2020’s All Things Being Equal, Sonic Boom’s first solo LP in 30 years. When the two artists met for the first time, it was because Kember-who has a similar knack for coaxing warmth from chilly waveforms-sent Lennox a fan note on MySpace. Panda Bear namechecked Spacemen 3 in the liner notes of his 2007 solo breakout, Person Pitch, which deftly employed electronic techniques to make earthy, acoustic-aping sounds. Kember’s sludgy, druggy band Spacemen 3, pioneers of late-’80s space rock, were a beacon when Lennox’s Animal Collective helped steer psychedelia into the 21st century. ![]() At first, Panda Bear was Sonic Boom’s acolyte. ![]()
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