According to my post on ‘Comfy in Nautica’, some time in December 2013 was when which I listened through Panda Bear’s Person Pitch for the very first time. Although I couldn’t have said that it was one of my favourite albums from that initial point, I recall ‘Comfy’ and the closer ‘Ponytail’ being the two tracks from there that struck an immediate chord with me. The album as a whole didn’t properly click until I revisited it in 2016. For whatever reason, could put it down to aging and probably a better appreciation of patience as a result, nearly every song on them became an instant hit. ‘Ponytail’ always felt like a good way to close out the album, but with this new sense of familiarity with the album, why it was chosen to be the statement to cap it off became much more clearer.

The very large majority of Person Pitch is sample-heavy. Not in the way that’s so egregious and obvious like you’ll get in too many examples to list, but much more tastefully. Like how in ‘Comfy in Nautica’, the chanting is a split second slice of the vocals from a song from the Thin Red Line film or the use of the ‘Tonight’s the night that I’m going to ask her’ lyric from The Equals’ ‘Rub a Dub Dub’ in ‘Bros’. In the instrumental track that precedes ‘Ponytail’, Panda Bear’s vocal is fed through a synthesizer and manipulated so that it cuts out and comes back in at unexpected moments, giving it a tape skipping effect. ‘Ponytail’ is the only track on the album that has no samples in sight. No warped-out vocal effects either. Nope. Here is just a reverb-drenched keyboard and pulsing, heartbeat-like kick drum, over which Lennox sings about wanting to fulfill his potential and never becoming too complacent.

There’s a great sense of innocence that I always feel when I hear this track. The keys have a bit of a toy-like tone to them, and whether or not it’s intentional, Panda Bear has a timbre in his vocal here that makes him sound much younger than the age he would have been when making the song. Quite ironic though because very much unlike a child, Lennox is sure of what he wants to do in his life. He makes that clear earlier with ‘Bros’, and he’s also a source of good advice via ‘Take Pills’ and ‘Comfy in Nautica’. In ‘Ponytail’ though he seems to plainly tell the listener his mission statement of life, which is to never feel settled, to keep exploring and to keep on caring for everything and everyone without become so jaded. With this message and its sweet, subtle delivery, it had to be the closer to this huge psychedelic pop experience.