Panda Bear

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Recommended if you like: Thom Yorke, Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem Stereolab, King Krule, Japanese Breakfast, Yves Tumor, Broken Social Scene

Two decades since debuting as the masked-and-nicknamed drummer and vocalist of Animal Collective, Noah Lennox has led so many creative lives, navigated so many different styles, and been part of so many beloved recordings, that it can be easy to overlook just how consistent his creative vision has remained. From landmarks solo albums like 2007’s Person Pitch and 2015’s Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, to breakthroughs with Animal Collective like 2004’s Sung Tongs and 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, to his boundary-pushing collaborations with Daft Punk and Solange, Dean Blunt and Paramore, all of his work followed an instantly identifiable emotional throughline while influencing multiple generations and genres of artists.

On Sinister Grift, Lennox’s first solo album in five years, he has returned with another statement that feels equally cumulative and unprecedented in his catalog. While his solo records have ranged from starkly intimate expressions of grief to colorful, electronic opuses, his music has never before sounded so warm and immediate. Working in his Lisbon, Portugal home studio with Animal Collective bandmate Josh “Deakin” Dibb, Lennox transforms Panda Bear into something resembling an old-school rock ensemble, playing nearly all the instruments himself and inviting kindred spirits into the process such as Cindy Lee, Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede, and—for the first time on a Panda Bear solo album—each of his Animal Collective bandmates.

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Sinister Grift plays like a tender, unflinching gaze into the human psyche. Where Lennox’s graceful, elegant pop melodies have often been filtered through funhouse mirrors of samples, loops, and effects, here they are backed mostly by simple arrangements of electric guitars, bass, keys, and drums. And yet, Lennox can make even these traditional sounds feel newly shimmering and psychedelic, touched by strange beams of light as if we are observing them as submerged in clear water.

While Sinister Grift is yet another reinvention in a career filled with them, few albums from Panda Bear have felt so instantly familiar and inviting. These qualities are partially due to Lennox’s chosen collaborators—each member of Animal Collective contributes to the record, and even Lennox’s daughter, Nadja, recites a poem in the lapping, beatific “Anywhere But Here.” Lennox also opens his circle to new collaborators such as Rivka Ravede, the vocalist of the Philadelphia electro-psych group Spirit of the Beehive, who provides uplifting harmonies in “Praise” and “Ends Meet.” Cindy Lee, aka the hypnagogic songwriter and drag performer Patrick Flegel, makes a striking appearance with a climactic, kinetic guitar solo on the closing “Defense.” Somewhere between a fight song and a guided meditation, “Defense” is a vivid encapsulation of Lennox’s current outlook—surging forward with a persistent rhythm, dazzling melodies, and a series of escalating hooks that alternate between pleas of vulnerability (“I’m in deep/I could use you by my side”) and unwavering persistence. Accompanied by Flegel’s silvery guitar playing, it radiates a sense of hard-won optimism.

Even with a wider group of collaborators, Sinister Grift remains a stunning showcase for Lennox’s singular musical gifts. After honing his hook-centric pop songwriting on 2022’s Reset, a collaboration with producer and former Spacemen 3 member Sonic Boom, and reaching ecstatic new peaks with Animal Collective on 2022’s Time Skiffs and 2023’s Isn’t It Now?, he now applies a deeper focus to his solo work. Highlights like “Ends Meet” and “Just As Well” represent new ideals for Lennox’s pop songwriting: songs engineered to get you humming along before the first verse is over while still finding ways to thrill and upend your expectations. Elsewhere on the record, Lennox delivers some of his most affecting vocal performances to date—particularly on the heartbreaking ballad “Elegy for Noah Lou”—alongside some of his most intimate and unguarded lyrics.

“Engine’s running/I can feel the miles,” he sings in the deceptively sunny “50mg,” a lyric whose wearied perspective—closer to classic country than the imagistic dreamworlds he has more frequently traveled—is hard to imagine arriving at any previous point in his catalog. From the dubby snare that introduces the rousing opener “Praise” to the glammy, triumphant outro of “Defense,” Sinister Grift follows a trajectory that dips from light to darkness, ultimately landing on something resembling hope. In a poem recited by Lennox’s daughter early in the record, she offers some encouragement about being true to ourselves amid the chaos of life: “Act well, love well, treat well, regardless of the return,” she recites in Portuguese. “Because what others do is not up to us.” Sinister Grift feels like a testament to the miles traveled and the miles ahead, never losing sight of the beauty of each passing moment.