It’s not often that we get to start something completely new. Unless you are of the restless gene, life necessitates a long submersion into a particular area; projects demand time and effort, love and toil, to be actualised; and a social life relies upon repetitive contact with the past to preserve the future. It is with great relish that we look forward to the prospect of a fresh venture. And today mine begins. PushNM will be my dark mistress for the foreseeable future – a future of sunshine pop, murky R&B and downright mainstream indie.
Originality is hard to come by. It is not found in a looped drum sequence or a tasty guitar hook, but in something deeper, more remote, less accessible, and of much greater value. It is that unnameable thing that attracts us. The deviation from the norm that acquires its own value for nothing more than being different. Marked with such a value artists are able to achieve greatness.
And so it is with Noah Lennox.
While Pitchfork will tell you that he is one quarter of Animal Collective – that famed beast of Baltimore – Lennox (writing, recording and performing under the pseudonym Panda Bear) is a successful artist in his own right. His 2007 cyber-hit Person Pitch led to unfathomable hype across the blogosphere. The effervescent warm fuzz of ‘Ponytail‘ bounces from line to line like a space hopper (and that’s far from the only 1960’s comparison that it conjures), barely stopping for a breath or pause in train of thought. While the locomotive-beginning to ‘Take Pills‘ swirls into the uplifting and self-assured repetition of the mantra “I don’t want for us to take pills/because we’re stronger and we don’t need them”. These summer-infused songs gel together to create a hazy relaxation that has acted as a catalyst in the upsurge of an entirely new genre: chillwave. The genre, which promotes thick-synth with thin, almost childish, vocals, has gathered followers like a rumbling avalanche gathering snow. And the pinnacle of this cyber-based obsession is Panda Bear’s new venture into uncharted territory with Tomboy.
From the first listen it is clear that this is a move away from his signature sound of Person Pitch and Merriweather Post Pavilion and into a new sphere altogether. The tried and tested balance of synth and sampling is rejected in favour of a less coherent mix of guitar and vocal, which seems to take a step back from the beautifully crafted nature of his previous LPs. The album begins with the vocal-heavy ‘You Can Count On Me‘, which drifts from choral musings to echoing sampled dialogue and ends without warning. While it is one of the stand out songs on the album, it serves as a good example of the direction in which Lennox takes; keeping the foggy distortion, a marsh of half-heard, half-missed lyrics in front of strong drums, while doing away with a vast quantity of sampled outbursts that add vibrant colour to Person Pitch. Where PP manages to create ordered structure in the chaos of bleeps and shouts, Tomboy seems to take a cautious guitar route to the edge of chaos. The watery ‘Surfer’s Hymn‘ is the paradigm of this clutter of noise which, one feels, is very close to being a great song and yet lacks the nuances of Panda Bear’s previous success. Utilising what sounds very much like a sample from Mario Kart (the zenith of retro-chic) the song relies heavily on its rhythm section to carry through its four minutes. The shame is that the lyrics, hidden again in an echoey cavern of reverb, offer value in their intrigue. Lennox repeatedly questions the basis for moral and social action culminating in the longing to act well – “If I could err on every good side every time”.
The saving grace for those obsessed with all things Panda Bear is the undulating ‘Last Night At The Jetty’ (video below). Oozing in psychedelic energy, the song drifts along with a simple yet effective rhythm and an upbeat tone. While the verse is obviously subjective (personal pronouns are numerous and emphatic) it is a song which offers more the listener than obscure individualities. The 60’s elements that have made this artist the father of chillwave are back in abundance to reassure this reviewer, at least, of the originality through similarity that Panda Bear is so renowned.
Tomboy is not bad. It is just a step away from the beautifully crafted machine that Person Pitch offered. Where songs such as ‘Drone’ (as exuberant and upbeat as it sounds) and ‘Friendship Bracelet’ give us chaotic sounds and unstructured patterns, ‘Last Night At The Jetty’ and, to an extent, ‘You Can Count On Me’ give us a glimpse of the true sumptuousness of the fruit of Lennox’s music. Despite this shift in direction, this record will be on the most wanted list of any AC fan for the coming months and on repeat across the experimental world.
Panda Bear – Last Night At The Jetty
PushNewMusic 
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