Panda Bear | ||
| Allmusic Biography : As both a solo artist and a member of Animal Collective, Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) has proved to be immensely popular and influential since rising to prominence during the early 2000s. Numerous acts (both indie and mainstream) have incorporated his style of reverb-soaked, Beach Boys-esque vocals, as well as his fluid, versatile drumming (which is heavily inspired by Stewart Copeland of the Police). His approach to sample-based composition, blending the techniques of hip-hop producers such as Madlib and Pete Rock, as well as atmospheric techno labels like Kompakt and Dial, has similarly inspired myriad indie electronic and chillwave artists. His full-length albums have consistently received mountains of acclaim, and hes been a popular live draw as well. Noah Lennox adopted the name Panda Bear in the late 90s, when he drew a picture of a panda on one of his first bedroom studio recordings. He grew up in Maryland and Pennsylvania, went to college at Boston University, and eventually found his way to New York City, where he met his future Animal Collective bandmates Avey Tare, Geologist, and Deakin. In addition to his work with Animal Collective, Jane, and Together, Lennox has released several solo albums. In 1999, while Lennox and Avey Tare were still in the earliest stages of what would grow to be known as Animal Collective, the first solo collection of Panda Bear material arrived on an obscure self-titled release on indie label Soccer Star. The electronica-pop recordings were miles away from the more spectral folk weirdness Lennox would explore over the next several years. Materializing in 2004, his more widely distributed second solo album, Young Prayer, was a murky, largely wordless free-folk album influenced by the death of his father. That year, Lennox moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where he met fashion designer Fernanda Pereira while on vacation; the two subsequently married and started a family. Person Pitch, Lennoxs third album and second on the Paw Tracks label, followed three years later. The album was a patchwork of repurposed samples and densely layered vocals, and not only met enormous popularity and critical acclaim, but went on to be incredibly influential on the entire indie spectrum. Lennox guested on recordings by Atlas Sound, Pantha du Prince, Taken by Trees, and Ducktails, and remixed the Notwists song "Boneless." For his next solo album, Lennox made the decision to move away from samplers toward a more guitar-heavy sound. Working with producer Sonic Boom, Lennox released his fourth solo album, Tomboy, on Paw Tracks in 2011. He continued racking up guest appearances, collaborating with Zomby, Teengirl Fantasy, and Daft Punk, whose 2013 album Random Access Memories (containing the Panda Bear-featuring "Doin It Right") won the 2014 Grammy for Album of the Year. In October of 2014, Panda Bear released a new EP, Mr. Noah. The EPs title track also appeared on Lennoxs fifth full-length, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, which arrived on Domino in early 2015. The colorful album again found Lennox collaborating with producer Sonic Boom. The full-length was followed by PBVSGR Remixes, an EP containing reworks by Pete Rock, Andy Stott, Container, and others, as well as Crosswords, another EP containing updated and unreleased material. In early 2018, Panda Bear released a vinyl-only EP titled A Day with the Homies. For sixth full length album Buoys, Lennox reunited with producer Rusty Santos, who hed last collaborated with on 2007s Person Pitch. The duo worked on material for the new album with the goal of making music that would connect with the tastes of a younger audience. To do this they intentionally tried to replicate and adapt production techniques of the eras popular music. The nine-song album was released in early February 2019. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 14 Title: Panda Bear Released: 1998 Tracks: 14 Duration: 53:37 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Inside a Great Stadium and a Running Race (05:49) 2 Mich mit einer Mond (04:10) 3 On the Farm (04:00) 4 Ohne Titel (02:38) 5 Fire! (02:44) 6 O Please Bring Her Back (03:35) 7 Aint Got No Troubles (03:59) 8 Winter in St. Moritz (02:13) 9 Liebe auf den ersten Blick (04:41) 10 A Musician and a Filmaker (04:30) 11 We Built a Robot (03:16) 12 Sometimes When It Hurts Bad Enough It Feels Like This (04:01) 13 A Lover Once Can No Longer Now Be a Friend (05:11) 14 Ohne Titel (02:50) |
 | Album: 2 of 14 Title: Spirit They’re Gone Spirit They’ve Vanished Released: 2000-08 Tracks: 10 Duration: 1:00:42 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Spirit They’ve Vanished (05:35) 2 April and the Phantom (05:53) 3 [untitled] (02:58) 4 Penny Dreadfuls (07:58) 5 Chocolate Girl (08:28) 6 Everyone Whistling (01:00) 7 La Rapet (07:52) 8 Bat You’ll Fly (05:03) 9 Someday I’ll Grow to Be as Tall as the Giant (03:10) 10 Alvin Row (12:39) |
| Spirit They’re Gone Spirit They’ve Vanished : Allmusic album Review : A surprise awaits the casual listener on Spirit Theyre Gone, Spirit Theyve Vanished. The packaging hints at pastoral songs with acoustic guitar and percussion, but once the play button is pressed, the listener is taken on a demented journey through nature as bucolic as an H.P. Lovecraft story. On the first seconds of "Spirit Theyve Vanished," a shroud of buzzing and swooshing electronics reminds the listener that this was recorded in 2000; soft processed vocals cut through, and a reference to Radioheads OK Computer becomes almost obligatory. (It remains throughout the album, but only as a vague relation.) After the dreamy first track, things really kick into gear. "April and the Phantom" is an exciting song with a drumnbass-like beat played with brushes on acoustic drums, simple melody, fast-strummed acoustic guitar, violent outbursts in the chorus (reminiscent of a trick Paul McCartney played with Wings), and the disquieting line "She ran out of nature" sung over and over -- powerful and quirky. There is something of early David Bowie in both the vocals and writing on "Everyone Whistling" and "Bat Youll Fly." Elsewhere on the album, heavy distortion and noisy electronics clash with soft piano arpeggios; the album closes with a 13-minute epic titled "Alvin Row." Avey Tare and Panda Bear sound like an acoustic version of New Order visited by the genius of Bowie and some studio time with Christian Fennesz or Cornelius. Some will find them too weird for straight tastes or too catchy for weird tastes -- then again, some will find them to be the best of both worlds. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 14 Title: Danse Manatee Released: 2001-07 Tracks: 12 Duration: 47:13 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 A Manatee Dance (01:02) 2 Penguin Penguin (02:15) 3 Another White Singer (Little White Glove) (01:58) 4 Essplode (03:23) 5 Meet the Light Child (08:44) 6 Runnin the Round Ball (02:07) 7 Bad Crumbs (01:43) 8 The Living Toys (07:48) 9 Throwin the Round Ball (01:35) 10 Ahhh Good Country (08:18) 11 Lablakely Dress (02:38) 12 In the Singing Box (05:36) |
 | Album: 4 of 14 Title: Young Prayer Released: 2004-09-28 Tracks: 9 Duration: 28:11 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 [untitled] (02:57) 2 [untitled] (02:03) 3 [untitled] (01:05) 4 [untitled] (05:11) 5 [untitled] (02:59) 6 [untitled] (03:09) 7 [untitled] (03:11) 8 [untitled] (02:48) 9 [untitled] (04:45) |
| Young Prayer : Allmusic album Review : Composed and recorded following the death of Panda Bears father, it is perhaps no surprise that Young Prayer comes off as a musical eulogy. But it is nothing like a wild outpouring of emotion. There is no tearing of hair or gnashing of teeth here. Rather, the short album is a restrained lamentation, a controlled elegiac mediation on the death of a loved one. The grief has settled in to stay, and it is reflected upon from a slight distance now. Panda Bear wordlessly but somberly moans in a falsetto through much of the album, setting a mood of crystalline bereavement. Descending vocal arpeggios echo through hollow halls, while erratic but tunefully strummed guitar and loose, mantra-like piano playing maintain an ethereal fragility. The most upbeat of the nine untitled songs is a hand-clapping, foot-stomping chant-in-the-round that ends the A side. A song that, despite its relative joyousness compared to the rest of the album, still recalls a funeral march more than a hootenanny. Young Prayer, however, isnt a morbid work. It seems to come from the point of view of acceptance, and can be seen as the sober and mournful flipside to the hyperactively gleeful Sung Tongs. | ||
 | Album: 5 of 14 Title: Carrots / KKKKK Released: 2007-01-23 Tracks: 2 Duration: 27:31 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Carrots (12:59) 2 KKKKK (14:32) |
 | Album: 6 of 14 Title: Person Pitch Released: 2007-03-20 Tracks: 7 Duration: 45:40 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Comfy in Nautica (04:05) 2 Take Pills (05:24) 3 Bros (12:30) 1 Good Girl / Carrots (12:42) 2 I’m Not (04:00) 3 Search for Delicious (04:53) 4 Ponytail (02:06) |
| Person Pitch : Allmusic album Review : The radical evolution of Noah Lennox aka Panda Bears sound over the course of his solo catalog is inextricable from the concordant developments happening with his collaborations in Animal Collective. Both entities shifted gears quickly from album to album, but the wildly different places Lennox would take his experiments truly found a voice of their own with Person Pitch, his 2007 quilt work of samples, textures, and unprecedented explorations of joy and sorrow. The same jittery campfire folk-psych that Animal Collective perfected on 2004s Sung Tongs spilled over onto Panda Bears cloudy acoustic ruminations on his solo album Young Prayer, released later that same year. By the time of 2005s Feels, Animal Collective had morphed into their own feral take on a more traditional rock band, acoustic guitars and wilderness noises traded in for drums, processed guitars, and blissed-out vocal loops. This straightforward approach made Person Pitch feel all the more out of left field, with Lennox deftly constructing the album almost entirely from carefully mapped-out samples, minimal beats, and endless layers of his own reverb-saturated vocal harmonies. The divergence from band playing toward electronic composition would inform and influence a huge swath of indie rock that came after, with Animal Collective themselves catching up to Pandas electronic leanings by the time of their high-water mark, 2009s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Though comprising just seven tracks, not a second of time is wasted over the course of Person Pitch. From the loop of clapping that brings "Comfy in Nautica" into focus to the gentle guitar chords and steady kick-drum pulse of album closer "Ponytail," each sound is economical and deliberate. Lennoxs gift here is assembling small sounds to create a bigger picture. "Take Pills" builds its rhythm from interlocking samples of scraping skateboard wheels and an anonymous oldies radio loop before walls of Beach Boys-esque harmonies come in on top. The song goes on to a second half made up of a bouncing, skeletal bassline and more waves of harmonies, occasional sound effects of distant atom bombs, screeching animals, and splashing puddles all culminating in a blurry pastiche that seconds as a perfect pop song. This is also true of album centerpiece "Bros," a 12-minute collage of chiming guitar arpeggios, stony vocal harmonies, hooting owls, and phasing loops that fade in and out of each other. More electronic impulses are blended into the respective grooves of two-parter "Good Girl/Carrots," while hazy tape manipulation, wordless vocal loops, and soft noise make up the more ambient "Search for Delicious." Disarmingly simple, perfectly metered, and striking in both its playfulness and vulnerability, Person Pitch stood as a perfectly executed statement for Lennox, and in at least some circles of indie rock, a musical revelation. | ||
 | Album: 7 of 14 Title: Live at ZDB, Lisbon, Portugal, September 2004 Released: 2008-09-02 Tracks: 2 Duration: 27:47 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Laughed for a World Filled With Fantasy/Search for Delicious/Bonfire of the Vanities (16:25) 2 Bros (11:21) |
 | Album: 8 of 14 Title: Tomboy Released: 2011-04-12 Tracks: 33 Duration: 48:13 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 You Can Count on Me (02:34) 2 Tomboy (04:55) 3 Slow Motion (04:36) 4 Surfer’s Hymn (04:09) 5 Last Night at the Jetty (04:37) 6 Drone (04:01) 1 The Preakness (?) 2 Alsatian Darn (04:19) 3 Scheherazade (03:52) 4 Friendship Bracelet (?) 5 Afterburner (06:49) 6 Benfica (04:10) 1 Drone (?) 2 Tomboy (?) 3 Last Night at the Jetty (?) 4 Surfers Hymn (04:11) 5 Scheherazade (?) 6 Benfica (?) 7 Slow Motion (?) 8 Friendship Bracelet (?) 9 Alsatian Darn (?) 10 Bullseye (?) 11 You Can Count on Me (?) 1 Alsatian Darn (?) 2 Slow Motion (?) 3 Friendship Bracelet (?) 4 Drone (?) 5 Last Night at the Jetty (?) 6 You Can Count on Me (?) 7 Alsatian Darn (?) 8 Slow Motion (?) 9 Afterburner (?) 10 Drone (?) |
| Tomboy : Allmusic album Review : With its dense layers of music and found sounds, Panda Bears Person Pitch became an indie rock standard-bearer almost immediately after its release. Trying to top it would be a daunting task, and on Tomboy, Noah Lennox doesn’t attempt it. Instead, he strips away the samples that made Person Pitch so hallucinatory and focuses on guitars, drums, and emotive melodies. A few found sounds make their way into the bookends “You Can Count on Me” and the beatific “Benfica,” giving the impression that Tomboy picks up right where Person Pitch left off, but the album’s overall sound is much sparer: the aptly named “Drone” and the smoky “Scheherazade” are downright minimalistic compared to what came before. Yet Tomboy is just as dreamy and hypnotic in its own way, with Lennoxs familiarly looping melodies and structures coated in so much reverb and delay that an intricate collage of samples isn’t necessary to make these songs transporting. “Friendship Bracelet” is more than trippy enough as it flutters by on naïve electronics, while “Slow Motion” is submerged in dub-inspired effects and keyboards. Unlike Person Pitchs immersive miasma of sound, Tomboy takes a more song-based approach to Lennoxs fondness for Brian Wilson harmonies and melodies. “Last Night at the Jetty” is a wistful, lysergic slow dance, surrounding vocals that could grace a Four Freshmen ballad with heady swirls of guitar; “Surfer’s Hymn” is a reconfigured teenage symphony that sounds like a memory of summer. Lennox recorded Tomboy in a basement studio in Lisbon, Portugal, and the album reflects those surroundings, providing a moody cocoon of sound to retreat into instead of Person Pitchs expansiveness. A feeling of loss often shadows these songs, and there’s a newfound sense of urgency, particularly on “Tomboy” and the fittingly soaring “Afterburner.” Meanwhile “Alsatian Darn,” which begins with chilly, ballad-like verses that warm into choruses that sound like an underwater folk dance, shows just how much more Lennox can do with less. Despite Tomboys significant changes, it feels less like a radical shift than a subtle progression; while it may not be quite as dazzling as Person Pitch, it should still please fans of that album and Lennox’s many other outlets. | ||
 | Album: 9 of 14 Title: Mr Noah Released: 2014-10-23 Tracks: 4 Duration: 16:07 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Mr Noah (04:13) 2 Faces in the Crowd (04:08) 3 Untying the Knot (03:10) 4 This Side of Paradise (04:34) |
 | Album: 10 of 14 Title: Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper Released: 2015-01-13 Tracks: 13 Duration: 51:11 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Sequential Circuits (03:36) 2 Mr Noah (04:13) 3 Davy Jones’ Locker (00:35) 4 Crosswords (03:36) 5 Butcher Baker Candlestick Maker (03:07) 6 Boys Latin (04:12) 7 Come to Your Senses (07:23) 8 Tropic of Cancer (06:12) 9 Shadow of the Colossus (00:17) 10 Lonely Wanderer (04:19) 11 Príncipe Real (04:54) 12 Selfish Gene (05:05) 13 Acid Wash (03:42) |
| Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper : Allmusic album Review : As Panda Bear, Animal Collective member Noah Lennoxs solo work patiently evolved from early folk jumble to the transcendent, sample-based bliss of 2007s Person Pitch to the weighty, darker minimalism of 2011s Tomboy. With fifth album Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, Lennox offers up a collection of songs that bring together the best aspects of his intensely personal, slow-motion journey through sound, feeling sharper, more deliberate, and more positive than at any point prior. While Person Pitchs mesh of melody and texture was revelational, the stew of samples, reverb, and vocal layering could get a little fuzzy around the edges. Same went for the sometimes gloomy murk of Tomboy, an album whose emotional core still sometimes felt vague even after the usual sonic clutter had been stripped away. Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper sidesteps both of these issues, coming on as strong as Lennoxs most composed pop songs with Animal Collective. By this point in his discography, Panda Bears trademark sounds are well-established and immediately recognizable even from the first strains of album-opener "Sequential Circuits." Equal parts simple synth drones and jarring, animal-like sound effects serve as the unlikely backdrop for layers of Lennoxs distinctive self-harmonizing vocals, always heavy on Beach Boys influence but developed by now into something all their own. When things lean more toward rhythmic electro-pop, catchy, pounding grooves like "Mr Noah," or the stumbling, Dilla-indebted beat of "Latin Boys," offer all the clarity and hookiness of Merriweather Post Pavilion-era Animal Collective hits like "My Girls." Repetition has always been a fascination for Lennox, be it the influence of minimal techno or experimentation with phasing inspired by 20th century composers like Steve Reich. Repetition coagulates nicely with watery synth grooves on album highlight "Come to Your Senses," with the lyrics "Are you mad?", repeating in a mantra-like chant until the listener has no choice but to consider the various, different interpretations of this simple three-word question. Even in the darker moments of the album, PBMTGR has an inherent lightheartedness which was sorely missed on the occasionally world-weary or frightened-sounding Tomboy. Tunes like "Tropic of Cancer" (built around a Christmas-time harp sample that sounds both heavenly and corny) and "Lonely Wanderer" are softly sad, but retain a certain optimism and wistfulness that could sometimes get lost on the more crooning, thoughtful moments of previous albums. Striking a balance between hypnotic pop and cloudy soul-searching, the album delivers all the ends of the spectrum Lennox has spent years perfecting, giving fully realized and refreshingly jubilant examples of a type of pop music so distinctive to its creator, he ends up in a class by himself. | ||
 | Album: 11 of 14 Title: PBVSGR Remixes Released: 2015-06-29 Tracks: 5 Duration: 21:59 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Crosswords (Pete Rock remix) (03:31) 2 Come to Your Senses (Danny L Harle remix) (03:18) 3 Come to Your Senses (DJ Marfox remix) (04:09) 4 Boys Latin (Andy Stott remix) (06:15) 5 Mr Noah (Container remix) (04:44) |
 | Album: 12 of 14 Title: Crosswords Released: 2015-08-20 Tracks: 5 Duration: 21:00 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Crosswords (EP mix) (03:35) 2 No Mans Land (03:45) 3 Jabberwocky (04:45) 4 The Preakness (04:11) 5 Cosplay (04:44) |
 | Album: 13 of 14 Title: A Day With the Homies Released: 2018-01-12 Tracks: 5 Duration: 28:52 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Flight (05:55) 2 Part of the Math (07:09) 3 Shepard Tone (05:16) 4 Nod to the Folks (05:46) 5 Sunset (04:46) |
 | Album: 14 of 14 Title: Buoys Released: 2019-02-08 Tracks: 9 Duration: 31:03 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Dolphin (03:41) 2 Cranked (03:19) 3 Token (03:37) 4 I Know I Don’t Know (02:51) 5 Master (04:04) 6 Buoys (02:34) 7 Inner Monologue (04:37) 8 Crescendo (03:10) 9 Home Free (03:07) |