Words Will Never Hurt Me

Panda Bear “Carrots (excerpt)” – At this point in time, openly aping the Beach Boys is just about the most boring and least imaginative thing an indie musician can do aside from becoming a Dylan-ish troubadour with an acoustic guitar. Even the best faux-Beach Boys songs devalue the currency of Pet Sounds, and every time an artist either mimics the ornate, tacky arrangements of Van Dyke Parks or hires him to do his thing on their records, Smile is made to seem just a little more mundane. That said, it’s sort of amazing to me that Panda Bear has managed to present a vocal performance strongly indebted to Brian Wilson and his partners in the context of an arrangement that otherwise strays far from the Beach Boys aesthetic, thus avoiding the icky reverence that taints the vast majority of music created within this tradition.

“Carrots” begins with a sequence that sounds like Mike Love wandering through the Animal Collective’s sonic wilderness, but the composition eventually shifts into two other discrete sections — a gently galloping groove built up from a piano loop, and a final passage that melds music box samples to a reggae rhythm. The vocal melodies for the latter two parts are gorgeous and carry the listener through the morphing musical landscape of the piece, but they are also presented with a heavy reverb that implies a distance from both the instrumental track and the audience. There’s nothing insincere about the vocals, but they are just one more element of pastiche in a larger composition that is rather forthcoming about its cut-and-paste nature. (Click here to pre-order the Panda Bear/Excepter split 12″ from Paw Tracks, to be released in late January. The Excepter side is pretty damn amazing too.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, with mp3s from K-the-I, Shimura Curves, and Justus Köhncke (via Michael Mayer).