Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist - Danse Manatee
(Catsup Plate)
Avey Tare and Panda Bear are two separate people--Panda Bear is the drummer (not a description of Avey Tare as some might think (as in Avey Tare, Physician)) and a damn fine one at that. The electronic-influenced psychedelic pop of their first album, Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, was most successful when Panda Bear could really cut loose and spazz all over the kit; the almost jazzy drumming gave a powerful edge to the songwriting and separated them from other "indie pop" acts.
On Danse Manatee, the band has added Geologist on keyboards and deconstructed their music to a new level. It sounds as if every instrument is run through some sort of electronic processing, creating a really strange environment where high-pitched squeals and bubbles surround the songs.
After the bubbling intro, "Penguin Penguin" crashes in sounding like a very tinny Lightning Bolt. Panda Bear is flipping out and the cymbal crashes shroud everything in a hazy din. The entire album is very tinny--this record has probably the least low-end of anything I own, but it doesn't make it difficult to listen to.
"Another White Singer" sounds like a Residents outtake, with disembodied voices floating around some electronic blips that sound like a basketball bouncing inside a moog. It's one of the more successful tracks, building up some rhythm for the subsequent song, "Essplode." Perhaps the poppiest song on the album, "Essplode" almost resembles a conventional indie dirge, though with spastic percussion and moments where everything seems to fall apart. It's incredibly infectious, and in an ideal world it would be a hit song.
Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist save their most experimental compositions for the longest tracks on the album, "Meet the Light Child" and "Ahhh Good Country". The latter is probably my favorite track of the album, sounding almost Arnold Dreyblatt-ian in it's repetitive string motion. "Light Child" is a pastiche of clattering, with some recognizable guitar parts.
Some people would probably call Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist the Storm and Stress of indie pop. However, the deconstruction is not pretentious here, but merely a vehicle through which a new form of pop music can be expressed. Some may feel that the electronics are overused, and that the entire record is a self-indulgent mess, but to me this is the work of a innovative band, trying to express the music that they hear in their heads.
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