Send "Panda Bear " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Noah Lennox's Panda Bear project has always been about making "difficult" music scan as almost radio-friendly, to translate experimental moves to a broad audience with little interest in such things. It's a strategy he learned, at least in part, from heroes like Arthur Russell and Brian Wilson, along with the avant-techno types he reveres. Like those disparate influences, Lennox has used potentially off-putting compositional and textural ideas to craft some of the most inviting music of his era. In turn, he's inspired more of his own followers in the last four years than anyone might have guessed. Lennox has found himself the unwitting king of the chillwave nation, hero to a whole generation of underground kids drawn to his mix of heavy reverb, sun-woozy synths, droning kraut-surf-ambient-pop songs, high childlike voice, and psychedelic-cum-nostalgic sleeve art.Tomboy, Lennox's fourth solo album as Panda Bear, was recorded in part with Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember of Spectrum/Spacemen 3. And again, in a way there's little here that's any further out-there than the blissful psychedelia and dream-pop Spacemen 3 and their peers were playing in the late 1980s, a lineage that stretches right back to stuff we now consider classic rock. With its angelic choirboy harmonies over an unchanging synth buzz, even "Drone", the album's roughest song, is a dead-ringer for the way Spacemen 3 songs like "Ecstasy Symphony" merged the pop high of Beach Boys with the woozy downer feel of the Velvet Underground. But despite Tomboy's shorter songs and more conventional structures-- especially compared to the loose percussive jams of Lennox's 2007 solo breakthrough Person Pitch-- he's still committed to pushing his music to strange places. And few of his chilled-to-the-point-of-entropy acolytes can match Lennox for warped hooks. Forget comparing his gorgeous voice to their mumbling. Unlike many chillwave and dream-pop artists (and Spacemen 3), Lennox is blessed with the ability to actually sing, and he knows enough about crafting harmonies to do more than vaguely nod in the direction of 60s pop. So Tomboy is a pretty singular mix of the eerie and the inviting....full text |
| Guardian |
| Each track on Noah Lennox's long-awaited fourth album feels like a revelation. Which is all the more remarkable considering how high expectations are: the Animal Collective member's last solo record, 2007's Person Pitch, topped several best-of-year lists. Tomboy looks certain to do the same. It's sumptuously textured and alive with ideas, moving deftly from reverb-soaked sunniness (the beatific "Surfer's Hymn" sounds like Lennox venerating Brian Wilson) to the fearsome propulsion of "Afterburner". There is a lot going on, all the time, but rather than being disorientating, its complexities are something to luxuriate and lose yourself in....full text |
| Ventvox |
| Panda Bear AKA Noah Lennox, who is known both as a solo artist and as a member of Animal Collective has crafted a beguiling album entitled, “Tomboy.” “Tomboy” is the follow up to his first independent work, “Person Pitch” which was released in 2007 as a collection of odd tracks featuring samples and textures wrapped around his sonorous tenor. Universally hailed as an instant classic, the album’s influence was readily apparent and prepped the way for his work in Animal Collective who released another landmark album, “Merriweather Post Pavillion” in 2009. While recent work from Panda Bear has been slight, the second half of 2010 saw the first rumblings that a new work was in progress when Panda Bear released a series of 7”s containing tracks from the album. The tracks that were released indicated a “sea-change” for Panda Bear who was moving away from sample-based songwriting and into the realm of more natural instrumentation. The tracks that were released during the latter part of 2010 included “Last Night At The Jetty” and “Surfer’s Hymn” which both reflected a love of synthesizers. The tracks contained on “Tomboy” have not lost their sonic density as layers of reverb, samples and instruments now collide within single tracks delighting headphone enthusiasts with their subtle charms. On “Tomboy,” Lennox jumps genres with a deft touch and the results slowly reveal themselves after multiple listens. Lennox worked with producer Sonic Boom who managed to give the album both a punch and a dynamic range, which further propels the album into your subconscious resulting in one of the most massive records of the year....full text |
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