Review: Panda Bear & Sonic Boom – Reset

Reset is Panda Bear’s most accessible album since Person Pitch, and joining forces with Sonic Boom makes for a winning pop formula.

 

If you listen to Panda Bear (real name: Noah Lennox)’s groundbreaking third album Person Pitch from 2007, you may not immediately realize that it’s largely built around samples of older recordings, especially 60s pop songs. For example, the sprawling single “Bros” gets the first six minutes of its melody from the 1962 song “Red Roses and a Sky of Blue” by The Tornados, and the next six minutes from the 1967 song “I’ve Found a Love” by Cat Stevens. The looped samples of Person Pitch paved the way for the subgenre chillwave to take hold in the following years, but Lennox would rely less on this technique on future recordings. Instead, he teamed up with Sonic Boom (real name: Peter Kember) to produce his next two albums: 2011’s Tomboy and 2015’s Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper. These albums incorporated a greater degree of original instrumentation alongside some samples, and both turned out great. Kember was not part of Lennox’s 2019 album Buoys which, given how that album turned out, was a wise decision on his part.

Reset brings back both the 1960s pop samples of Person Pitch and the songwriting chops of Sonic Boom heard on Tomboy and Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper to make a winning formula. It’s Lennox’s most accessible album since Person Pitch, albeit with much simpler tracks, and has a lighter feel to it than anything he’s done before. For Kember, it marks the first time he has helped write lyrics and sing alongside Lennox, making this Panda Bear-Sonic Boom collaboration a wholly new experience for both.

The peaks of Reset are when its tracks wear their pop samples on their sleeves, creating a sound that lands between a 60s pastiche and the psychedelic electronica more familiar to Lennox and Kember. “Gettin’ to the Point” samples the acoustic guitar of “Three Steps to Heaven” by Eddie Cochoran, but the various squeals and undulations of synthesizers remind you it’s a modern production. Its balmy tone and easygoing nature make it a great starting track, setting the tone of the album. “Edge of the Edge” samples the opening vocals of doo-wop hit “Denise” by Randy and the Rainbows, and Kember throws in a bass “dum-dum-dum dum” to join the acapella chorus. Panda Bear’s music has been compared to the Beach Boys for years thanks to Lennox’s Brian Wilson-esque voice and emphasis on harmonizing vocals, and it’s borderline impossible to describe “Edge of the Edge” without mentioning them. The duo also added a bit of a Latin flair to two of the tracks on Reset: “Danger” includes the croaking sound of a güiro alongside the mellow guitar notes of the Everly Brothers’ “Love of My Life,” while “Livin’ in the After” adds castanets to the strings from the Drifters “Save the Last Dance.” All of these samples are just the same few seconds looped throughout the song, but Lennox and Kember manage to reinvent their original context in unique ways.

 

Some of the duo’s interactions with the samples on Reset are a little more puzzling. “Go On” samples the one-two punch guitar chords of the 1966 song “Give it to Me” by the Troggs (who were mostly known for “Wild Thing”), adding plenty of handclaps and groaning psychedelic synths to the mix. Lennox’s vocals are generally chilled out, although deceptively dark, as he sings lines like “one dude’s dead, and another’s next, something’s coming round the bend.” However, Kember’s vocal part just consists of him repeatedly chanting the sample’s title “Give it to Me” in an oddly threatening tone, throwing off the whole vibe.

Almost half of Reset lacks samples, 60s pop or otherwise, and these tracks are only slightly less attention-grabbing. Kember takes lead vocals on “Everyday,” and his markedly low voice sounds quite a bit like the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Meritt. “Whirlpool” is an upbeat synthpop track with drum machine beats and handclaps, and it has such a singalong style that you might not even notice its dark lyrics like “fell in the deep end, now I guess there’s no hope.” If there were a con to these two tracks, it would be that they’re both quite repetitive. “In My Body” has great vocal interplay between Lennox and Kember at its chorus (not going to add another Beach Boys comparison here), but its minimal instrumentation is at odds with the rest of the album and sounds a little too much like Buoys. Lennox and Kember trade vocal duties on the closing track “Everything’s Been Leading to This,” which features a cheery synthesizer melody and more güiro, and it really fits as the ending celebration to cap off the album.

Even though this is not the first time that Lennox and Kember have worked together, and relying on looped samples is far less novel today than it was in Person Pitch’s 2007, Reset still succeeds at being a concise pop album. None of the tracks really evolve beyond their initial melodies, and it would be a stretch to call anything on this album “multifaceted.” However, there’s also not too much experimentation that would alienate a casual listener. Reset is not an album that challenges you – it just warmly invites you in.

Rating: 8/10