New Music: Panda Bear, Kubichek!, Eluvium

It's kind of an informal agreement among us here at Audiversity that we take Mondays off so we can deliver the rest of the week. I try to hold up my end of the bargain, but last week was a mess. Between school and Valentine's Day and writer's block, life, as they say, got in the way. Writer's block? Like, who on a blog gets that? Seems easy enough to just bang out three reviews a post two or three times a week, know what I mean? There's so much out there, it should be easy to whip something into shape.

But sometimes I just get overwhelmed, dig? There's so much stuff out there, it's tough after awhile to tell the difference between any of it. And everyone is so obsessed with the new newer newest most newest first(!) that we sometimes forget why we're even here in the first place: To present to you what we think is good. Timeliness matters, but I'd like to think quality control matters more. Save the exclamation mark.













Panda Bear - Carrots (Paw Tracks 2007)

Panda Bear - Panda Bear/Excepter split 12" / Paw Tracks

Panda Bear is a case in point. Most of you who have any interest whatsoever in the freak-folks or "noise" in all its convoluted forms will have already been alerted to the split between Noah Lennox and the good people in Excepter who were recently jettisoned as 5RC hastily went "dormant"(More on that later too). This 12" showcases a sound that won't necessarily be familiar to listeners of Animal Collective or even Panda Bear himself given a musical history that formally extends back to 1998 and the one-off Soccer Star Records. While Excepter's "KKKKK" is a fantastic five-parter recorded live, the epic Side A featured here is an "extended medley" as Lennox previews material from his forthcoming solo album due out later this year.

Three parts of happy-go-lucky child's play smeared with bassline badness make for an uncomfortable aural home. Lennox starts off with tribal rhythms for the first movement, sings his words as opaque as he's ever been in irresistable harmonies over Terrestrial Tones-like repetition, and eventually takes an accessible piano midsection kicking and screaming into demented dissonance to complete the trifecta. The beat may change forms, but it never wavers in nearly 12 minutes; this anchor coupled with the vocals-as-instrumentation provide a brilliant dichotomy that you can only experience by actually sitting down and listening to it. If Excepter is disco from inside the womb, Panda Bear's latest is disco from outer-space, beyond the safety of the space shuttle.













Kubichek! - Hometown Strategies (30:30 2007)

Kubichek! - Not Enough Night / 30:30

Re-enter the exclamation mark: Space is the place for Newcastle quartet Kubichek!, too. They take things from floating around in a suit that nearly killed Leonov on Voskhod 2 and trade places with you, so now it's you who's hopelessly floating around as Al McDonald barks out his Futureheads-under-the-pillows vocals. The faithfully devoted other members of Mark Nelson, "Frog" Coburn (I could give his real name, but Frog is obviously more appealing) and Chris McGreevy make it feel like it's your fault you're out there. "It's hard to believe that there's no time for anything" they repeat over and over here on "Hometown Strategies," just one of a number of excellent songs from their debut LP Not Enough Night.

Maybe that just struck me in the right way, or maybe it was the gimmick of the exclamation mark (like we haven't already seen that before, right Dartz!? ¡Forward, Russia!? But it's cool because they'll be playing together at Koko this time next week), or maybe it was just all the activity happening from the bangin' percussion to the crisp guitars to the natural melody and discord that's prevalent not just here but in pretty much every other choon they've put out... But one thing's for sure, if "Hometown Strategies" doesn't immediately grab you as catchy and quick (all over in a tidy 3 minutes and 41 seconds), you're not in the right frame of mind. Check back in a few minutes when you've finished with Eluvium.












Eluvium - Prelude for Time Feelers (Temporary Residence Ltd. 2007)

Eluvium - Copia / Temporary Residence Ltd.

From outer-space to the inside of your mind and back again, that's what quality control is all about. Explore every possible angle and determine if it's worth the while. Experiment. Expand. Expunge. Some of us get why we're here, some of us get the hell out, and some of us never consider the question. Matt Cooper gets it. When it comes to personal growth, evolution, the experimentation of new sounds to him (and us) no matter how minute... That's why he's here. Thank goodness too, because if that weren't the case, Copia would go down in the annals of musical history as just another Talk Amongst the Trees. Of course, some critics have rightly pointed out that this is rehashing some of the same territory An Accidental Memory in Case of Death covered two years ago. The difference is that this is far from minimal. This is lush, not necessarily epic or self-involved. It's a heartfelt album with moving passages that just doesn't feel too self-important or worried about its near-New Age territory. Cooper abandons guitars for the cerebral piano lines, organs and string sections Jon Brion might've needed as a backup for his Magnolia score.

Indeed, we often hear about how post-rock artists are making "scores" for this, that and the other; Explosions in the Sky aside, nobody really does it. But Eluvium is likely the closest you're going to come thus far this year. If "Prelude for Time Feelers" doesn't beg for a hospital scene, a weighty conversation during a lakefront walk or a moment of solitude as you watch the exclamation marks evaporate and your shuttle return to earth without you, I don't know what does. Great music transcends timeliness not just because it has staying power; it transcends timeliness because it has leaving power, too.