Sock Free Hideaway

 BEATS OF LOVE 

106. Danger Dub by Panda Bear / Sonic Boom

I DEEPLY regret letting my dark moods and false ideas about authenticity drive me to be numb during my free time. It took my focus away from my true passion: my love for music.

Many albums I listen to feel incomplete or overworked. I see the problem, but I cannot fix it. Luckily, Adrian Sherwood is producing this record, and he fixes it. Giving it space to breathe. 

I have struggled to connect with Animal Collective records ever since the masterpiece that was Sung Tongs. That album balanced troubled Brian Wilson-style harmonies with genuinely thrilling experimentation. By the time they toured Feels, however, those same vocal arrangements just started grating on me.

I felt the same resistance toward the Panda Bear and Sonic Boom collaboration, Reset. On paper, their equal partnership promised so much, but the final product felt too constrained by its own pursuit of perfection. It is a frustrating listen: tracks like Danger are packed with brilliant hooks and clever 1950s vocal samples, yet the overall result ends up sounding a bit too artificial and saccharine.

Thankfully, Sherwood reinterprets the project and, whilst retaining the vocals, he isn't afraid to chop them up and create something looser, less constrained by concept and, on this track, especially upbeat. I'm in skank heaven coz those brilliant hooky moments are captured, but thankfully, with less coherence and fresher sounding instrumentation. It repudiates the notion that a new psychedelia has to sound futuristic. It simply doesn't, it just needs to be creatively exciting. 

I also regret that such an optimistic vibrancy wasn't around decades ago. Perhaps my moods wouldn't have been so dark.