Pigeons and Planes Expand Their Sonic Playground With the Kaleidoscopic 'See You Next Year 2'
Pigeons and Planes and Big.Ass.Kids’ highly anticipated compilation album, See You Next Year 2, has been released, featuring emerging alternative artists and producers like Kenny Mason, skaiwater, Monte Booker, Deb Never, King Isis, and more. Recorded over eight days at the famed Shangri-La recording studio, owned by Rick Rubin, each artist was hand-selected and invited to participate in the recording process. Unembellished: it’s a work of genuine collaboration, weaving sounds, styles, and genres in a refreshingly uninhibited representation of musical synergy.
Largely, SYNY2 is a tactile experience. The artists have somehow infused the excited hum of a studio session into the tracks themselves, inviting an overall live feel without the live sound. The first slew of tracks embody this feeling, kicking the album off with a sucker punch of musical exploration. King Isis and Kenny Mason open with “Bob Dylan Bus,” intertwining an overdriven bass, dry drums, and delayed synths that twist with a mind of their own. The sounds are raw and biting, a forward invitation into the world of the album. There’s also a cheeky nod to Shangri-La recording studios in the title, which references a refurbished tour bus owned by Bob Dylan that lives at the property.
“Bob Dylan Bus” is followed up with AG Club and ICECOLDBISHOP’s “How To Cry,” a sensual antithesis of silky piano chords and AG Club’s liquid gold vocals. A delicate brushstroke of strings washes over the rolling drum groove, and Icecoldbishop settles seamlessly against the beat, stirring an edge of determination into the track’s flow. Further down the tracklist, Hamond’s “I Tried” laces in-the-room sounds within a soft-spoken, alt-R&B landscape. The vocals really unfold in this track, with layers of harmonies and intertwining melodies creating a constant stream of emotion.
There’s a similar fluidity in the drum groove of “Fatboy” by AG Club, one of the more ballad-esque tracks on SYNY2. The kit morphs with glossy unrestraint as the song’s urgency builds, allowing the instrumentation to course cyclically while the intensity blossoms. Deb Never’s contributions have a kindred continuity, exploring the landscape she builds. One of her tracks, “Dope Sick” with Lovespells, is an ethereal indie track, punctuated with otherworldly synths and distorted guitars.
Her signature dreaminess comes through on the reverb washing across the track, which persists in her Kenny Mason collaboration, “Cannot Forget.” This one taps into the touch of grunge, pop punk, and midwest emo, one of the many beating hearts to be found throughout SYNY2. In “Cannot Forget,” Mason introduces dark guitars and a gut-punch of angst stirring in the artfully overproduced vocals, inviting a touch of shoegaze noise. "223s" by chase plato and Love Spells lives in an adjacent world, merging alt-rap and emo influences.
There’s also tracks like “Jump,” where ICECOLDBISHOP straddles a line of emotional depth, one side dipping into midwest emo guitar riffs while the other embraces bold, alt-hip-hop beats. Or “New Slaves,” a Billy Lemos production featuring skaiwater that drapes a lilting, plucked guitar loop over guttural hyperpop drums. Lead single “Big Bank” was the initial lure into the album, representing a contrasting world of warbly synths and '80s-inspired samples, carved by decisive bars by Paris Texas and Kenny Mason. A theme of genre exploration becomes clear within SYNY2, highlighting what must’ve been an enticing exercise of “contradicting” sounds and styles between the artists involved.
SYNY2 is truly a work of spontaneous collaboration; though the touch of each artist can be deduced, each track is innovative in sound and intention, shaped by the talents of the other musicians. With See You Next Year 2, these visionary artists and producers have tapped into musicality that transcends expectation, pulling from palettes on all sides of the genre color wheel.
Listen to See You Next Year 2 below:
