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December 03, 2004
Jane Bears
Panda Bear - O Please Bring Her Back
Since I mentioned Animal Collective yesterday, I figured today was as good as any to post something from Panda Bear's first (self-titled, out-of-print) solo album. Most of 'Panda Bear' is a mixture of acoustic guitar-accompanied, dark-beat inflected pop songs, and ruminative electro instrumentals. If you know any of the Animal Collective records well, Panda Bear's first solo has elements of 'Spirit They've Gone, Spirit They've Vanished', and 'Sung Tongs'. The staggering fact about this album is that it was recorded when Noah Lennox was around, say, 18 years old. If I memory serves me right, 18 was around the age I was listening heavily to Dave Matthews Band Can and writing bad poetry in French being an absolute badass.
'Please Bring Her Back', as you might've guessed by the title, is about a girl lost, and the swirling despair that accompanies such an event. It's Panda Bear, sitting calmly in his bedroom 5 years ago, wishing for a 'reset' button on this relationship, more than anything. It's the kind of blind, irrational and overpowering sentiment that I'm sure everyone experiences at least once. The searing brand of heartbreak that keeps you up all night, playing and re-playing scenarios in your head about how, just how you might be able to win back your love. What you would say. What you would do differently this time.
This track starts off with heavily-strummed acoustic guitar, and Panda's soft voice enters with the lyrics 'Go to sleep, sweet child/push aside your cares/calm your beating heart/ease your furrowed brow', while a quick swarm of lightning-bug plucked acoustic notes flies through. Towards the end of the song, Panda sings 'She's as much of me as I am', trying to prove that, without her, he's a mere figurant- an empty, speechless prop, robbed of something integral.
This album was, apparently, the first and last release on Panda Bear and Deakin's label, Soccer Star Records. I don't think you could possibly find it anywhere, but as consolation, Insound has two other mp3s from the album, if you're interested.
Posted by matt at December 3, 2004 08:00 AM