Panda Bear

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Essential Albums

  • Person Pitch
    Person Pitch
    Person Pitch

    In 2007, no one saw Person Pitch coming. The third solo album from Animal Collective member Noah Lennox—recording as Panda Bear—was an absolute revelation to anyone who’d been closely following not only his music, but the general trajectory of indie as a whole. Person Pitch’s bright and melancholic electronic pop sound was worlds away from his previous record, 2004’s meditative and monastic Young Prayer. And though the wild-eyed melodic bursts of Animal Collective’s 2004 breakout Sung Tongs gestured towards Person Pitch’s impossibly lush Brian Wilson-isms, nothing about Sung Tongs’ sparse structure hinted at the absolute swarm of sound Lennox would conjure on this landmark of an album. Beyond creating its own totally unique sonic world, Person Pitch proved massively influential on an entire generation of DIY musicians, and is considered one of the building blocks for the 2010s chillwave subgenre. Its reach extended to the other members of Animal Collective themselves, who drew from Lennox’s love of the low end for their own epochal Merriweather Post Pavilion in 2009. Despite Person Pitch’s seismic impact on indie, its seven songs—five relative miniatures anchored by two sweeping epics (the oceanic “Bros” and the hypnotic raga of “Good Girl/Carrots”)—have an intimate, homespun feel. It’s electronic music with an unusual tactility; you can practically feel Lennox’s fingers press the buttons on the Boss SP-303 sampler that he used to assemble the album. His lyrics are achingly personal, even as they resemble sparse mantras and nakedly sincere koans, from his meditations about depression on the gently shaking “Take Pills”’ to the devotional pleas for authenticity on the booming “Comfy in Nautica”. Anchoring it all is Lennox’s uncanny beam of a voice, which rings like a bell and carries a distinct loveliness. It’s a record that, beneath thickets of dense and disorienting sound, isn’t afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve—a sense of honest expression that has cemented Person Pitch as a generational classic, and defines Lennox’s singular career as a whole.

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About Panda Bear

Panda Bear’s ethereal experimental pop looks fondly to the past as much as it bounds playfully into the future. Born Noah Lennox in 1978, the Baltimore-raised artist released his self-titled solo debut as Panda Bear in 1999—just as his band Animal Collective was starting to take shape. The lo-fi electro-acoustic noodling of that album laid the foundation for much bigger and brighter productions to come. As Animal Collective’s sound and vision expanded, Lennox’s solo work became even more defined by its loops, layers and reverb-soaked croons. After releasing the hushed folk elegies of 2004’s Young Prayer, and making a permanent move to Lisbon, Portugal, Panda Bear stepped into full colour with the lush, sample-based psych pop of 2007’s Person Pitch and the woozy ambient soundscapes of 2011’s Tomboy. As Panda Bear, Lennox has continued to follow his instincts and far-flung influences, colouring his kaleidoscopic melodies with propulsive breakbeats, booming sub-bass, Latin trap rhythms—and even Auto-Tune (on 2019’s Buoys). No matter how innovative his sonic experiments, though, he remains a sucker for the sweet strains of ‘60s pop, which can be heard all over 2022’s Reset, a sample-laden set with longtime collaborator Sonic Boom of underground psych legends Spacemen 3.

FROM
Charlottesville, VA, United States
BORN
17 July 1978
GENRE
Alternative

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