Like oddball s scrabbling for indie chart position, and have unleashed a iteration of their excellent 2022 album : EP follows , , and an actual, honest-to-goodness , featuring the songs’ sheet music. Excessive? Perhaps a little. But it’s hard to argue with vision.
The duo originally wanted to record with a mariachi band on “Tropic of Cancer,” for Panda Bear’s 2015 album which Sonic Boom co-produced. But the idea remained a pipe dream until the duo were booked for a show in Mexico in 2023, leading to a recording session with Mexico City band . Few albums merit the remake treatment as much as , a fascinating excursion into 1950s pop and child-friendly melodies that sound simultaneously innocent and suspiciously narcotic, a record both hard to pin down in its unusual combinations yet refreshingly straightforward in its clean melodic lines and two-chord loops.
That simplicity makes an unusually malleable record—a Lego set for inventive minds. The original “Danger” made compelling use of its dreamy acoustic guitar, handclaps, and Everly Brothers sample; it shone as a left-field reggae number when remixed by as “Danger Dub”; and it resonates with cinematic romance as “Peligro,” thanks to the glistening strings and floral trumpets of Mariachi 2000 de Cutberto Pérez. The song’s transformation is complete when the Mexico City band’s vocalists replace Panda Bear’s slightly reedy Spanish-language singing with their rich, full-bodied voices on a second ver.