Swing and a miss

Person Pitch, the second solo album from Animal Collective member Noah Lennox (a.k.a. Panda Bear), has been getting tremendous amounts of critical love. As I was writing this, its score from review-averaging Web site Metacritic.com stood at a formidable 87 out of 100, tying it with Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and Patty Griffin's Children Running Through for second-highest-rated album of 2007. And thanks to a very early leak, it has received rapturous praise on message boards for months. Clearly, it must be excellent! Only a fool wouldn't like it!\nWell … time to put on my hat with bells, then.\nI'm not the type to arbitrarily backlash against a successful album -- I just call 'em as I see 'em -- but Person Pitch goes beyond being overhyped into the realm of inexplicable hype. That is, after many, many listens, I still don't understand the rationale for its stratospheric acclaim. It's very ambitious, and quite listenable as far as experimental music goes -- but it's also boring, repetitive and, from track to track, somewhat formulaic. It has been widely noted that Lennox achieves vocals/guitar harmonies akin to the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson circa Pet Sounds -- but rather less attention has been paid to the fact that, from song to song, he does nearly the same thing with them: crank up the reverb until he sounds like he's singing in an echo chamber, then loop it so the same sequence repeats over and over and over again. Add to this a steady beat; strange noises (owls hooting, chains rattling, grease sizzling) at the beginnings, endings and mid-song transitions (other reviewers have called these unnecessary things "indulgences," I call them "studio wankery"); and the occasional little flourish (say, the hum of a passing UFO), and you have most of Person Pitch. The only really dramatic break from this pattern is sixth track "Search For Delicious," an irritating sound collage that doesn't really go anywhere and is the album's low point.\nBut, all that said, the Brian Wilson harmonies do their trick, making Person Pitch very warm and inviting (if also tranquilizing) -- and moments of excitement break the torpor, such as in "Bros" when the beat and noises overthrow the Wilson-style harmony and things collapse into a psychedelic freak-out. Of course, that doesn't come about until 5 1/2 minutes into a 12 1/2-minute song … Sigh.