Best of Rock
Pop’s biggest voice of 2011 runs on cigarettes, red wine and high-octane heartbreak
BEST INFLUENCE – PANDA BEAR
Noah Lennox is outside Greg’s Bagels in Baltimore, remembering what a weirdo he used to be. “I used to work here,” he says. “On my third day, the boss said, ”˜You’ve been coming to work high. It’s got to stop.’” Lennox chuckles. “I hadn’t smoked weed once! I was just socially awkward.” He pauses. “I still am, but not as much.”
Lennox ”“ a member of the band Animal Collective who releases solo records as Panda Bear ”“ is doing drive-bys of old hometown haunts. He lives in Lisbon with his Portuguese wife, their daughter and their infant son, but he’s in town to work on new songs with Animal Collective. Driving, Lennox speaks in laid-back skaterese ”“ you can’t quite blame Greg for mistaking him for a stoner: “This neighbourhood was pretty gnarly when I was a kid, but it’s kinda sick now”; “That used to be a music store, but it cruised out.”
In April, Lennox’s fourth album, Tomboy, will be released. It’s the follow-up to 2007’s Person Pitch, a swirl of dusty samples, reverb-rich vocals and lyrics about doubt and personal affirmation that made Panda Bear an avant-pop hero and a poster boy for recessive bedroom noodlers everywhere. Tomboy is a departure from its predecessor (it’s built around guitars, not samplers). “Just making the same album over again?” he says. “I’d feel like a douche.”
Couching bright melodies in sonic haze, Person Pitch was a touchstone for microgenres like “chillwave,” where artists don’t shy from sugary melody but cake their tracks with layers of grime and nostalgia. (Kurt Vile, Best Coast and Washed Out are among the acts that owe the LP at least an indirect debt.)
For Tomboy, Lennox “wanted to do something really basic, to take the songs out of the soup and, like, crush them down,” he says. “I saw footage of Nirvana and said, ”˜I want to do my own version of that.’ The whole concept was about force.” Along the way, though, he blunted that force, running his guitar and chunky beats through strata of distortion and delay. It’s something like the musical equivalent of whipping a prizefighter into shape, then pumping him full of Quaaludes and shoving him into the ring. “I could have just plugged in and riffed,” Lennox says. “But that wouldn’t have felt like me.”
