7.4
The psych/avant-folk genre is a bizarre one. It's by no means boring, but I always find other critics and music enthusiasts hype it up far to much. Animal Collective has this tendency to be quite enjoyable one track but then fall short on the next track. This "roller coaster" aspect is present in the highly loved Panda Bear or Noah Lennox of Animal Collective on his fourth studio album Tomboy.
I still can't understand the universal acclaim Lennox's previous LP Person Pitch received. I found the LP to be all over the place and didn't have a consistent, coherent theme that is really reached through most quality LPs with me, not saying that every albums has to have a definite theme as in a Pink Floyd-like album theme, but just so that the songs mesh together well in a whole. Tomboy does a better job than Person Pitch did at creating a centralized theme of emotions that Lennox is trying to convey through his often chaotic and muddy sound of intense use of reverb in his vocals and keyboards.
"You Can Count On Me", Tomboy's opener is structure a lot like Person Pitch's intro "Comfy In Nautica" as a "chant" song with heavy dramatic drums. The chanting "no you can't count on me!" leads us into the leading single, "Tomboy", that was actually released a year ahead of time. "Tomboy" is an easy highlight for the whole LP, it has bouncy rhythm that is different from the single which was more guitar oriented, now it is more murky and the beat is a backdrop to Lennox's gorgeous vocals.
Lennox is at his best when he simply jams, like on the ending to "Alsatian Darn" with the steady clapping with a melodic back drops of a watery guitar and other miscellaneous electronic noises. Lennox can also be quite good when he slows things down with a mysterious, eerie feel like on "Scheherazade" which sounds like it could be the theme to some black and white neo-noir film. The second half of Tomboy is far more strong than the beginning with purely creative tracks. The seven minute jam "Afterburner" is along with lines of the twelve minute "Bros" on Person Pitch.
The weaker tracks in the first half of the album like "Surfer's Hymn" and "Drone" have that "Animal Collective curse" on them where they are simply just annoying. They have growth value to them and are hard to be liked, the chaotic "Surfer's Hymn" has so much going on like the sound of waves, random flickers of electronic noises, and other random background noises, it's all not appealing compared to the rest of the LP. "Drone" is like an attempt for Lennox to create a really appealing "out-there" track to balance out the pop values of the album, but it fails with overly done unattractive long drones of keyboard.
Tomboy can be taken in both direction, I guess I took it in between. I saw the beauty in some of the jams Lennox created, but was annoyed by some of the unimpressive tracks that dragged the whole entire Tomboy experience down. Highlight like "Tomboy" and "Alsatian Darn" will keep you entertained for a fairly solid album with qualities of fun tracks that are easily darkly dancey. Headphones/quality stereo system required.
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