“Last Night at the Jetty” / “Drone”
[Fat Cat; 2010]
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In all fairness, Noah Lennox never explicitly promised that he’d have his Tomboy LP done by the end of this year. But we do have more than half the songs from the album; like Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Friday weekly releases, Panda Bear has released several 7″ single with tracks that will end up on his album (with some studio polishing, I hope–these aren’t exactly the cleanest cuts).
The latest is “Last Night At The Jetty,” and it’s the prettiest single Lennox has dropped this year. The vocal harmonies and rather medieval melody recalls “Tomboy” and “Slow Motion,” though the marshy guitar work might sound more at home on Avey Tare’s Down There. Though Lennox has said that he’ll be playing live instruments on Tomboy in lieu of the samples that made 2007’s Person Pitch such a success, “Jetty” is as repeating and meticulous as “Comfy in Nautica.” That’s not a bad thing; Panda Bear has a knack for squeezing intrigue from recurring musical themes, and as he recalls a prior night’s events–“Didn’t I have a good time?”–the song unfurls as though it were his memory, lending credence to his assertion that “no one could deny my mind.”
B-side “Drone,” meanwhile, sounds exactly as you’d expect it to; what sounds like a synth harpsichord drives four minutes of slow, rhythmless chanting, much like on Animal Collective’s “Bleed” from the Fall Be Kind EP. That may sound a bit unbearable, but as with many of his songs, Panda Bear requires patience from the listener to grasp the gist of the melody. There’s a cathedral-y to this track, like Lennox updated an old Gregorian chant for the 21st century. Honestly, it’s not exactly his most striking work, but as a B-side, its cavernous reverb and almost incomprehensible lyrics will appeal to Animal Collective fans who miss the band’s earlier, lo-fi work. Though again, we’ll see how it sounds on the final LP; I suspect that the musical elements on “Drone” might be a little clearer once they’ve been properly remastered.
At any rate, the presumed goal of these singles is to get listeners excited for Panda Bear’s next album. By that criterion, “Last Night at the Jetty” certainly succeeds.
8/10
