Reset

About

Panda Bear’s music has always felt connected to the innocence and melancholy of ’60s pop, but <i>Reset</i> is the first time he’s made the connection so explicit. Built on simple loops of often familiar songs (The Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance for Me,” The Everly Brothers’ “Love of My Life”), the music here is both an homage to a bygone style and a rendering of how that style could play out in a modern context—in other words, time travel. Together with Sonic Boom—formerly of Spacemen 3 and himself an expert interpreter of ’60s pop and psychedelia—he gives you his handclaps (“Everyday”) and heartaches (“Danger”) and windswept <i>sha-la</i>s (“Edge of the Edge”). But they also summon the fatalism that made artists like The Shangri-Las so bewitching (“Go On”) and the space-age wonder that characterized producers like Joe Meek and the early electronic musician Raymond Scott (“Everything’s Been Leading to This”). And like the supposedly basic teenage sounds it came from, <i>Reset</i>’s smile conceals a yearning and complexity that runs deep.

via Apple Music