"Slow Motion" - Panda Bear - TrackReview

Score: 8

Going off of the fact that about 6,200 listeners have listened to the two Untitled tracks, and about 6,300 have listened to "Mich Mit Einer Mond", I estimate that around 10,000 decidedly hardcore fans of the Animal collective have listened to Noah Lennox's 1998 release Panda Bear, and well under 1/10th of that figure legally owns it. Released on the infinitesimal label Soccer Star, (now Paw Tracks) the album is a 14-track romp that genre-hops whenever it feels like it. The sound ranges from somber acoustic folk ("O Please Bring Her Back") to lo-fi, borderline disco ("We Built A Robot"). The first track, "Inside A Great Stadium And A Running Race" is a nearly six-minute exercise in minimalism that builds at a snail's pace until the song has just enough instrumentation for the vocals to finally come in and accompany the bare-bones soundscape.

This song, to me, is the most reflective on the album of the direction Panda Bear would later choose to delve into, although it hardly sounds like it stylistically. "Inside A Great Stadium And A Running Race" certainly wouldn't fit on Person Pitch, and definitely not Young Prayer. But it's the one instance on the album that I feel best represents Noah's lust for repetition and the art of minimalism, just having one or two ideas repeated ad infinitum. This is the one thread that has remained constant throughout his albums, and it's become increasingly more prevalent over time.

By now, it's beyond blatant. On "Slow Motion", the new track off of what will soon be his fourth LP, Tomboy, Panda drenches one- or two-word indistinguishable phrases in reverb, and repeats them... and repeats them... and repeats them. The vocals are placed atop a heavy, infectious, off-kilter drumline that remains unchanged for the duration of the song, but fades into the background stealthily, allowing the other elements to shine. The only thing that really brings change to the song is the dripping, rudimentary keyboard (or heavily-processed guitar?) line, as it establishes itself, shifts for a while, reprises, and then shifts once more. Outside of a few samples that only come to the listener's attention after a few listens, these three elements: the keyboard(?), the drums, and the singing, comprise the entire song. There's really just not much to it. But it works.

If the material on Person Pitch was sunny, then this song is an insight into what I expect will be its cloudy counterpart: sparse, a little bit darker, and more straightforward. I've been reading people say that this song is more of the same, and yes, to a certain extent, I see this song as a continuation. This song is actually scarily similar to "I'm Not" off of his last album. "Slow Motion", however, hints at a less sample-driven album. Still very echo-y, still very minimal, but without the samples pulled out of obscure songs. So it seems as though he's managed to figure out a way to maintain his old sound while keeping things fresh.

If you liked Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective or Person Pitch by Panda Bear, find a download of this.

~-~