Available on: Paw Tracks 7”

I’ve always had an unsure relationship with Animal Collective. Despite their inarguable moments of greatness (I know we all know it, but really, ‘My Girls’?), too often their songs disappear into an ether of wibble for me. It’s all too hushed and far too watercolour, and I can’t get behind it. That, and I can’t really take them seriously – as Ben Graham brilliantly put it in The Quietus last year, they’re “highly educated young people from the richest nation on Earth, wearing masks and pretending to be pandas while effectively pissing around in a sandpit. The patterns they make are often exquisite. But it’s not enough.”

When their vocalist Panda Bear is doing his own thing however, it’s a different story. His last solo album, 2007’s Person Pitch might have been sketched in similar tones to much of Animal Collective’s work, but the way it thrived on loops and repetition, building up and breaking down songs at micro-tonal levels, for me associated it far more with albums like Actress’s Splazsh than the usual supposed peers of Animal Collective. He also teamed up with Pantha du Prince for a bewitching collaboration this year, ‘Stick to my Side’.

‘Tomboy’ is Panda’s new solo single, and the first music to be released from his fourth album, due later this year. And to be honest, there’s not a lot to say about it – which doesn’t necessarily make it bad. Its opening guitar loop renders it incredibly familiar, like Person Pitch finished playing two minutes ago and this is a brief, sketched bonus track. Drums gallop, very low in the mix, and are later joined by breathed, almost coughed sounds – the sort Ariel Pink used to make. Panda implores you to “take his hand to hold”*, and you probably will, but with that voice in the back of your head reminding you that you’re only doing so ‘cause you expect the rest of the album will be good. As a standalone single, ‘Tomboy’’s pleasant and promising, little more.

*He probably doesn’t even say that, but you know, he mumbles.

Tom Lea