(2022) Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - Reset  


Review:
On their new collaborative album, Reset, Noah Lennox and Peter Kember—Panda Bear of Animal Collective and Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3, respectively—revel in a stripped-back sonic palette that evokes wonder and innocence. Highlights like “Edge of the Edge” and “In My Body” are instrumentally bare, based around little more than reverb-heavy sampled voices that utterly envelop the listener. The result is immense and expansive, rife with elegant synth arpeggios and doo-wop-inspired background vocals. Much of Reset gestures toward the past, employing retro styles and filtering them through modern psychedelia and creating a nostalgic, sugar-coated sonic fantasy. The Shirelles-style background vocals of “Danger” complement Lennox’s plaintive lyrics about heartbreak, conjuring a 1950s-style teen-pop melodrama. Too often, though, Lennox and Kember err too far on the side of goofy, as on “Livin’ in the After,” which features an over-the-top orchestral sample that suggests the garish mood music of a space-age bachelor pad. Occasionally, Lennox references his prior work, as on the opening track “Gettin’ to the Point.” One of Reset’s shorter songs, it ostensibly gets to its point quickly, but other than a recreation of Person Pitch’s electro-acoustic sampledelia, it’s unclear what that point is. The song lacks the otherworldly feeling that Lennox’s and Kember’s best music achieves so effortlessly. Many of the songs here contain seeds of interesting musical ideas, but they’re either not fully developed or undercut by odd production choices. “Whirlpool” features a catchy melody and curious slide whistle effects, but by the end of its five-minute runtime, the track has worn out its welcome. The contrast of Lennox’s high-pitched vocal and Kember’s deeper, resonant tone could have resulted in some interesting textures, but it’s more jarring than complementary. And on “Everything’s Been Leading to This” and “Everyday,” Kember’s baritone-esque singing feels especially awkward against the bed of synths playing a spritely, sunny melody. Merging arcane sounds with the duo’s more typically spacey psychedelia is an intriguing and sometimes compelling experiment. And though a collaboration between the two artists might sound like it has the potential to be a musical marvel, it ultimately feels misguided. Reset revels in the whimsical sounds of ‘50s and ‘60s pop and rock but lacks the memorable songwriting that made much of the best music from that era so indelible.-Slant


   


Track List:
01. Gettin’ to the Point
02. Go On
03. Everyday
04. Edge of the Edge
05. In My Body
06. Whirlpool
07. Danger
08. Livin’ in the After
09. Everything’s Been Leading To This


Media Report:
Genre: indie-rock, psychedelic rock
Country: Lisbon, Portugal
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits


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