Here, two musicians from different generations of psychedelia unite and look backwards. Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember was notorious for describing his work habits as a member of Spacemen 3 in the late Eighties as “Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to”. In this century, Noah “Panda Bear” Lennox has been a prolific purveyor of trippy multilayered sounds, releasing solo albums concurrently with work created with his better known band, Animal Collective.
The pair have collaborated before, but the Sonic Boom name was in the small print when he did production work on two previous Panda Bear albums. This time they’re equals, with Kember even giving a rare outing to his low, drawling singing voice on Everyday.
While some past Panda Bear work has been murky and disorientating, as if the music is playing in a different room from the one you’re in, this one is bright and clear, often so guileless in its joyful melodies that it could be a children’s album. The reason it sounds so nostalgic and familiar is that the starting point for each song was another song from the late Fifties or early Sixties. Kember noticed that the intros to these classics were often different enough from the main tune to form the basis for something else altogether, if they were looped.
So the listener gets to play an extended round of Heardle. The sharpest-eared will spot Save the Last Dance for Me by The Drifters, Denise by Randy & The Rainbows, The Everly Brothers song Love of My Life and Eddie Cochran’s Three Steps to Heaven, among others. The doo-wop backing vocals and simple descending synth line of Edge of the Edge makes it feel like a playful lost Beach Boys hit. Livin’ in the After takes the dancing strings of The Drifters and doesn’t do anything weird or experimental with them, just keeps them doing their blissful thing for a full three minutes.
Song structure is less distinct. Not for nothing are there lyrical references to carousels and whirlpools. Round and round they go, with Lennox and Kember adding parts and removing them, and Lennox’s choirboy voice always layered to sound like there are at least 10 of him. Hearing these old songs in new forms feels like remembering a summer day long ago – a lot of the details are missing but the magic is all still there.
