The New Classics #42: Person Pitch, Panda Bear

Title: Person Pitch
Artist: Panda Bear
Year: 2007
Label: Paw Tracks

I was slow to jump on the Animal Collective wagon. Despite being exposed to their music from 2004 onward, they never really did anything for me. First off, they were saddled with that whole "freak folk" genre title for a while, which, in hindsight, they never even remotely deserved. Then there were the whimsical album covers, featuring squashed berries and cartoon animals and so on. Most importantly, though, the music never grabbed me. Squishy, squelchy and often formless, I found Animal Collective's mid-decade albums to be only so much forgettable, inoffensive noise. I'd like to say that Person Pitch, the second solo album released by AC member Noah Lennox (under the name Panda Bear) was the album that changed that. But that's not true in the slightest. My bored distaste for the band prevented me from ever giving it a true chance back in 2007. I saw two songs with running times approaching thirteen minutes and I balked. Yet, in hindsight, I've realized what a colossal mistake that was. Two years later, Animal Collective would release Merriweather Post Pavilion and leave most of the world picking their jaws off the floor, myself included. Looking back, it's clear that Person Pitch laid the groundwork for most of what made Pavilion so successful. It should have been my initiation into the world of Animal Collective, but my own stubbornness prevented that from happening. So, it's time to go back and recognize this accomplished and overwhelmingly uplifting masterwork.

Trying to describe the music on Person Pitch always brings me back to the same word: soup. I realize that good music isn't often described as "soupy," but there's really no better term to describe the rolling, dense, yet endlessly flowing music landscape Lennox created. Primarily recorded using samplers, the album's seven songs string together bits and chunks from other records into looping rhythms and soaring grooves, interrupted by sound effects and other unidentifiable noises. Rather than the stark, crisp sound of samples found in most hip-hop, however, Person Pitch's tracks are organic. They slosh around, rarely leaving midtempo, building upwards as more looped bits and bobs are layered into the mix. So yeah, soup. This music rolls around, revealing various delicious odds and ends now and then that you have to fish out with your ears and devour. Or something like that.

The real appeal of Person Pitch, though, is the mood. Lennox cited some recent changes in his life as the inspiration behind the album, including getting married, having a child and moving to Portugal. The resulting atmosphere, then, is a happy one, balanced by a healthy dose of maturity and responsibility. The opening track, "Comfy In Nautica," revolves around the optimistic advice of trying "to remember always just to have a good time." Likewise, the end of "Take Pills" concludes that "I don't want for us to take pills, because we're stronger and we don't need them." The album's most celebrated track, "Bro's," has the best lyrics of all, as Lennox speaks to an unspecified partner (possibly his wife or Animal Collective bandmates) that "I'm not trying to forget you, I just like to be alone." As songs about honest communication go, it's hard to beat, as Lennox carefully explains to those who want him around that occasionally we all just need a bit of alone time.

Animal Collective have always enjoyed rapturous critical notices from the hipster set, but Person Pitch was positively engulfed in praise upon it's release. Sunny and almost unfashionably optimistic, it still managed to be a progressive, experimental record, featuring a grand-yet-ethereal sound far removed from anything in indie rock beyond Animal Collective themselves. In year end album best-of lists, it regularly eclipsed Strawberry Jam, the proper Animal Collective album released the same year. Of course, as I explained, I missed that boat entirely. It wasn't until Merriweather Post Pavilion and Lennox's touching song "My Girls" that I went back and realized that Person Pitch was the genesis for all these lovely songs about family and dedication. This really is a wonderful and engaging album, managing to be quite upbeat while still retaining enough weirdness and edge to keep things interesting, evoking the Beach Boys at Brian Wilson's most eccentric and ambitious. For me, it took a long time to recognize all that. Hopefully, Person Pitch's charms will be more readily apparent to the rest of you.

Next up on The New Classics: You Forgot It In People, Broken Social Scene