Panda Bear — Buoys ANALYSIS & REVIEW
Published 02/19/2019
On one end, this album is slightly on the underwhelming side, as its main compositional focuses and techniques in the timbral area weren’t as immensely captivating of a trip as they set out to be. On the other end, though, this album pleasantly surprises, as it never becomes a lopsided or single-dimension affair that it could’ve easily fell into. Sure, the electronic sonic blanket was the focal point throughout, but I would be remiss to say that it wasn’t carefully decorated with strong pitch collection, noticeable direction, and at times fun melodic lines.
As to how successful the wash of electronic sound was, I’d say it was definitely creative, unique, and well layered enough to be considered enjoyable throughout, but it just missed an ounce of real pleasantry and spaciousness in sound quality to make the leap to being outstanding. The reoccurring use of water droplet-like cascades was quite a neat identifiable feature and painted a vivid setting. While not a magnificent beauty altogether, the synthetic sounds were all quite congenial and worked in a hierarchal system of dynamics to create the personality and mood of each track.
I think those aforementioned sounds could have done a bit more to fully engage and teeter-totter with the constant acoustic guitar, which aside from vocals was the only non-synthetic timbre that was featured. If anything, I perhaps would’ve liked to hear the electronic wash usurp the guitar in several places. The guitar seemed to take over the background structure too many times, and with it being the least decorative and most straightforward sound on the track, it came to make the entire timbre sound a little plainer than it should have been. That’s just one nitpick for an otherwise well-formed, well-nuanced sound.
The strong presence of linear motion here that used rather interesting secondary scales and color tones was what brought this album to its level of enjoyability, however it was also hit and miss. The highlights were the songs “Token”, which made nice use of the mixolydian mode in its recurring motive, “I Know I Don’t Know”, having cool phrase extensions and good high and low points within the line, “Home Free”, with good use of rests interspersed through short and punctuating kernels, and especially the title track “Buoys”, being actually one of the most melodically brilliant songs I’ve heard all year with great scalar motion, more uneven yet satisfying phrase lengths, and rewarding arrival points at the ends of phrases, altering between Sol and Do when ending up on the tonic chord.
Apart from those four songs, while melody indeed played a helpful and important role in the music’s direction, there wasn’t anything too juicy or eye-opening. The song “Inner Monologue” took an especially downward turn, giving little engagement from the slow, repetitive, small blips of sung material that never traveled anywhere own their own. There were glimpses of real melodic interest overall and it was a nice effort to put so much weight on vocal movement; some end results just didn’t stick as well as others, thanks mostly to the shape of the line and the relationship with underlying chords.
Pitch and color wise, this was a pretty intelligent and neat work to listen through, given the immense focus on sound quality and sonic conveyance. The sound was the ultimate prize, although not necessarily a crown jewel. It could have been better, but there are specific moments to really enjoy, and for lovers of timbre-based singer songwriter music, it’s worth listening through the more empty, humdrum moments to get to the rewarding points. I will say, though, that four is better than one in this instance. Solo projects can be fun, but this doesn’t really come close what he’s been able to do with a whole collective (especially one of the “animal” variety).
