What I Want What I Want What I Want

Panda Bear “Guys Eyes” (Live at All Tomorrows Parties, 9/11/2009)

The original version of “Guys Eyes” from Merriweather Post Pavilion is glowing and lush, just gushing with optimism and goodwill as its vocals overlap in and out of phase like a Beach Boys harmony re-arranged by Steve Reich. This alternate solo arrangement by Panda Bear has a very different feeling, and flips the mood of the song without altering its essential sentiment. If anything, Panda is offering a different perspective — whereas the album recording comes off like a person deciding to accept the love and pleasure in his life, this take seems more like a man yearning for connections that elude him. Both versions come from an open and loving heart, but the solo arrangement sounds so….solo. Lonely, melancholy, confined to a wide empty space. He keeps singing about what he wants, and while all that seemed well within grasp in the Animal Collective recording, that mantra in this performance just sounds like painful, thwarted, impossible desire.

Buy the original recording from Amazon.