Unstuck From The Dark Side

Panda Bear “Just As Well”

Panda Bear and his collaborators in Animal Collective are masters of taking a basically normal song and giving it a wild and flamboyant arrangement. They’ve done this a lot of different ways through the past 25 years, but this “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if it sounded like thing no one else would consider doing” impulse is the through line in their overall body of work.

In this context, Panda Bear’s new solo record Sinister Grift is among the most regular-sounding music anyone in AnCo has ever produced. But even in a straight forward mode, Panda’s palette is bright and bold and a little surreal. A lot of it sounds like a Margaritaville version of his old classics, or like he’s trying to make something that would feel right on a cruise ship.

I find this incredibly charming, particularly on “Just As Well,” a song so bouncey and bubbly that it’s easy to miss that the lyrics get fairly bleak. He’s mainly singing about feeling “stuck on the inside” and hoping to get out of a rut, and I suppose that eagerness to change is what makes it a Panda Bear song. There’s always some degree of optimism in his work, and a desire to improve as a person.

Buy it from Bandcamp.