Sunday Music: "Praise" By Panda Bear

My buddy Daniel sent this album to a group chat of friends the other week. I pressed play, out of curiosity and mutual musical respect, and from the dubby drums in the intro to the childlike scales throughout, I was six years old with watercolors and a smock, all within a couple seconds.

The sheer palette of influences on this track, I so love being surprised by colorful musical twists.

“Oh, a musical scale like from your first music lesson.” “Oh, a weird, sub-octave voicing.” “Oh, now it’s a boy and a girl singing.” “Oh, now it’s that Queers doing the Beach Boys vibe, but, is there a synth in there too?”

There’s a lot of straight on-the-nose music these days. I appreciate the bluntness of those artists. Then, there’s a lot of poetically deft, you could get a master’s degree in researching it, Kendrick/Beyonce density going on too. I love the homework listens too.

But there’s still room for cluttered and confused feelings pop. Just enough of the Beach Boys fulfilling their wall of sound promise over the course of a track, but also with the Queers drunkenly racing through on-the-nose yet (extremely) base-level fun. Sometimes you just want a stick of bubblegum to take a walk with until the flavor runs out I guess.

Sometimes you want to embrace the part of the masters you can imitate, without reaching any farther than your natural limitations. Let that sink in. I need to write that reminder somewhere I can see it.

I don’t know what Panda Bear is exactly praising on “Praise,” from the new record Sinister Grift. I do know, by the repetitions of “again and again and again” in the lyrics, it’s about process.

It’s about love, even if I’m not quite sure what the relationship status is in the song.

It’s about feelings, even if I’m positive the lite-abstraction of the early 2000’s Animal Collective energy is anything but precise in labelling those feelings.

It’s about making us rise, come back down - but only part way, only to settle in an unexpected place, for a moment until we do it again.

Great music takes you on a journey, this song (and album) is doing just that for me lately. I’m enjoying how all the colors mix and relate, how I’m finding new corners well inside its framing, and I’m loving not exactly being able to describe it. Have you heard it yet? What do you think?

h/t Daniel C. for putting me onto this one

ps. remember The Riverdales? I loved this song so much. Now, the real question, who did a better I don’t wanna go to a party song - The Riverdales or Courtney Barnett?