Panda Bear
Bro's

I recently bought an amp so I can actually use the record player I bought over a year ago; 'Bro's' was my first purchase. Partly because of all those Hawaiian dancers on the cover, partly because it’s Panda Bear. Panda Bear (a.k.a. Noah Lennox of Animal Collective) who makes music like the sound of a Beach Boys record bouncing off the bowls of a cathedral - distant, strangely spiritual, yet still familiar, perfect pop music at its core.

'Bro’s' sounds like an approximation of Caribou as conceived by Brain Wilson, with just a smidgen of Lennox’s other band thrown in for good measure. It begins with an owl’s hoot, building into a chorus that gradually dissolves and dissembles into a fairground of warm, echoed chants and half-words. “I’m not trying to forget you”, he sings as the track falls in on itself, leaving only the owl, a guitar and Lennox’s vocals, seemingly being sucked back into the place where the song came from; up the spiral of the cathedral, up to the top, where you emerge to be greeted by Hawaiian dancers as far as the eye can see, with fireworks illuminating the sky.

You take the needle off, return it to the edge and it all starts again, beginning with an owl.