Panda Bear & Sonic Boom
“A ? of When”
Domino (available via Bandcamp)
“Has it ever been easier to complain publicly about something without trying to change it?”
That’s one of the credos that Panda Bear and Sonic Boom have adopted for the upcoming release of their second collaborative album, “A ? of When,” due out on July 10 via Domino.
It’s a fist-waving-in-the-air against strictly online culture, where a lot of context gets lost. And a lot of musical memory is so quickly devoured and shit out that it’s easy to feel defeated as an artist.
So it makes sense that, like a lot of musicians, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom are struggling with how to release an album in the digital age. Fair enough. You spend all this time writing and pouring yourself into something. You release it. The internet gobbles it up in mere minutes. The cycle moves on. Did you even release an album? There’s already something else coming down the pipeline...
That’s where a sense of physicality comes in; a physical release like an actual piece of vinyl you’ve got to buy at the store. And, in the case of Panda Bear and Sonic Boom’s upcoming album, you can’t even stream this thing online if you wanted to. They’ve made the choice to keep it off of streaming services and to make a bit of an in-real-life-only event.
All the concern about battling internet release schedules and creating a tangible, physical release also means the title track, “A ? of When (Ultimate Drive Time Mix),” sounds like the full-throated rock and pop records of the late 1960s and 1970s.
There are elements of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, mostly due to Panda Bear’s uncanny vocals that remind me so much of Wilson. Massive guitars call back to Pete Townshend’s best and biggest work with The Who. Plus, the “Ultimate Drive Time Mix” edit actually takes out the sirens and some of the background clutter from the original version that makes it more suitable for actual radio play – talk about nostalgia!
There’s a throwback sound to the whole affair that makes as much a battle against streaming services as it is a throwback time machine to making music sound a lot like it did back in the day when you had to get up and buy the record and sit and listen to the whole damn thing in your bedroom while reading the liner notes.
And I’ll do just that when the full album comes out, just like back in the day.
