If unlikely associations make the world go round, then Animal Collective‘s Panda Bear (AKA Noah Lennox) and Sonic Boom (AKA Pete Kember, once of the legendary noise rockers Spacemen 3) have it spinning. First meeting when Kember co-produced Lennox’s solo release Tomboy fifteen years ago, the pair united as a thing to jointly craft 2022’s Reset, a splenetic, retro leaning walled garden of nu-psychedelic delights.
It’s follow up A ? of WHEN is, if anything, an even more dayglo melding of things from the box labelled “Don’t go together”. Having discovered harpist Mary Lattimore during a support for them, Kember recorded her sound check and cut it up into samples, before introducing Lennox to yodelling and then bringing his love of steel bands to the party. Unrestricted by convention, the pair then used this go anywhere palette to make an ear-pleasing noise.
There’s a certain darkness laying just underneath however, one that manifests itself in the police sirens of the title track, one which deals with so they say the moment when “All the shit we’ve fucked up finally catches up with us’, the prophetic refrain soothsaying “It’s not a question of if/It’s a question of when.” Incongruous? Definitely, a thought underlined when the duo have a very decent crack at the Beach Boys on Lucky Charm and Lee Hazelwood via the toothsome Revive Him. If Panda Bear and Sonic Boom make for a strange type of couple, then A ? of WHEN is a soundtrack to a dinner party with them that has their essence baked right into it.
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The Voice Of Unreason 