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Feb 26, 2025 Web Exclusive By Ben Jardine

Throughout his 25-year career, Panda Bear (aka Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox) has had a wide and varied output. His records with Animal Collective—influential in their own right—touched on psychedelic pop, always carving out an avant garde space. In his solo work, Lennox has often opted for even more experimental sounds, such as on 2019’s synth-saturated chamber pop Buoys, or 2015’s hip-hop-adjacent, sample-heavy Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper.

Collaboration, too, has been a touchpoint. Alongside his work in Animal Collective, Lennox has worked with Jamie xx, Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, and, notably, Daft Punk.

These two facets (experimentation and collaboration), in conjunction, have brought us here, to Panda Bear’s eighth studio album: Sinister Grift. The record marks the first time Lennox has worked with all Animal Collective members outside of an Animal Collective project or solo Panda Bear record. Other collaborators include Cindy Lee and Lennox’s partner, Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede.

The result is Panda Bear’s warmest, most pleasurable, and colorful yet. Sinister Grift shows Lennox dipping ever deeper into his Beach Boys influence and his penchant for rocksteady and dub. Sinister Grift is a sunny record, full of lush production and a tinge of the ’60s—more like 2020’s Reset (another collaboration, this time with longtime producer and former Spacemen 3 member, Sonic Boom) than his other records.

Album opener “Praise” drops us right in: Beach Boys harmonies, the dub sound, the bedroom pop, and the walking bassline of 1950s doo-wop. The dub continues on tracks “50mg,” “Ends Meet,” and the record’s second single, “Ferry Lady.” On laidback “Anywhere but Here” the Portuguese-language addition creates a sense of swirling place. The moodier shimmering of “Elegy for Noah Lou” sounds like the product of reinvention: as though Lennox had to rid a past version of himself, as each season sheds the one before it to reach new growth.

The album’s standout track is actually its closer, and as the first single, our first taste of this new Panda Bear. After the amalgam of similar influences and touchpoints, “Defense” comes out of leftfield. A collaboration with Cindy Lee, it’s a driving plea for love’s reconnection while at the same time serving as the album’s most prominent earworm.

There’s very little sinister about Sinister Grift, at least, not in the album’s warm and glimmering instrumentation. And that unsteady ground—of appearances versus what’s under the hood—only adds to the mystique and enjoyment of Panda Bear’s music. (www.pandabearofficial.com)

Author rating: 8.5/10