Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, returns with his first album in six years. ‘Sinister Gift’ is a change with respect to the previous Lennox album, ‘Buoys’ (2019), moving away from the electronic production of that and betting on a more organic sound. At least, on the surface.
Produced by Josh Dibb, ‘Sinister Gift’ is Panda Bear’s first album in which all members of Animal Collective collaborate, in one way or another. And not only them: Cindy Lee and Rivka Ravede de Spirit of the Beehive also join the project.
This March, the artist will present his new album, along with the best of the rest of his discography, with five concerts in our country. These will take place on March 22, 23, 25, 26 and 27 in Oviedo, Bilbao, Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid, respectively.
We met with Panda Bear at the Hard Rock Hotel in Madrid during Blue Monday himself and the same day Trump assumes his presidency at the White House. We talk to him about authenticity, free days, reggae and playboi cardi.
It is your first album in six years and Josh Dibb said he felt like a new chapter for you. What do you think?
I think the last album, ‘Buoys’, was the beginning. This seems like a kind of continuation. I know it may seem a little crazy about first, but these two albums feel like a change. If ‘Buoy’ was the negative, ‘Sinister Gift’ is photography. For me it makes sense like that. The two are guitar albums and there is a lot of prosecuted in both. ‘Buoys’ seems explicitly a computer album, but in this that is more hidden, as if it were a secret, but for me it is clear.
It seemed very organic to me.
I think that has to do with the way of working on Josh, but under the surface I would say that it is very technical.
Did you know that ‘Buoy’ was the beginning of something when you were doing it?
I definitely felt it, yes. Even when we were doing it, I knew he felt super different from everything he had done before. I love when the bands have that something that when you listen to it you always know they are. So I hope my music has something like that.
Did you have all this in mind while you made ‘Sinister Gift’?
Yes, I should say that the original idea was to make recordings with very traditional arrangements and instruments. I played and fixed the guitar, the bass and the battery, in addition to singing. Then, gradually, we abstracted those recordings and transformed them into something different. The only song that looks like that is ‘Elyy For Noah Lou’. You can hear that there is a song there, but as if they had disassembled. The idea was that everything sounded like this, but after two or three weeks we liked the way they sounded intact. We also spent a lot of time editing the sounds and making the right arrangements, so for most songs we feel we had found it. We didn’t need to take them to another place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNT8OVP-umc
I think that song stands out as the most bleak of the album, which for me is quite cheerful. It is very easy to listen. And then that song arrives and it clashes you.
Yes, in terms of sequence the album starts up, down with that theme and then go back again. I did not want to end sadly because the story is not autobiographical, but it is based on things that I went through and my story did not end in ruin, so I did not want the album to feel that way.
In general, would you say that your music is autobiographical?
Before it was a lot. I used to feel that the best way to express myself or communicate something to another person was to be as literal as possible. He has always inspired Emily Dickinson’s poetry. A very direct prose, without ornaments. Then, at some point around ‘Grim Reaper’, I began to change what seemed correct to me. Instead of looking inward, he looked much more out and now is a bit like a hybrid in both ways. For me it is important that the songs are rooted in something that has meaning for me, but I also feel that if they are too personal, they lose strength. I think telling stories is the best way to convey a message. Maybe it is a thing of age because I am already an old guy and I am more interested in sharing things with people than before.
Yes, you are giving a space for people to see in music. If it is clearly about you, then it is only for you.
I agree, but I did not feel like that.
How did you feel?
I suppose it is the arrogance of being a young person and in a way you assume that what you are happening is what everyone is happening or that everyone will be able to find themselves in this super specific thing you have experienced. I am not angry with myself. It is simply like very much, very of that age and I suppose that I am not exactly that person.
‘Defense’ is one of the best songs on the album. Sounds to Panda Bear and Cindy reads equally. Did you know before?
I’ve never been in the same room as him. He has played in some concerts with Animal Collective and visited Josh’s house in Baltimore a couple of times. I was a fan from Women and also all his material alone after that. It’s great to see that he has so much recognition now, but it has been very good for a long time. ‘Diamond Jubilee’ is incredible, but it’s not news for me.
“I am already an old guy and I am more interested in sharing things with the people than before”
For the rest of the world, a little yes. I think many people have discovered it with this album.
I feel that you enter and salts with people. And with people I mean large groups of people, not individuals. The trip you are making as a creative person makes no sense for large groups of people. I mean, someone like Arthur Russell did not really have any success in his own life, and is a bit sad. These people, like Nick Drake, felt confused in their time: why don’t people like mine? At least in my experience, there are things that seem to fit people and do so, and the opposite is also true. ‘Dimaond Jubilee’ has really resonated at this time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxz4lewglkg
I think your music can be something challenging, but with this album no. It is very instantaneous.
I think it would attribute part of that to the production of Josh and his point of view about things, which is the same as working with Sonic Boom. It is as if I were filtering my music through another person’s point of view and that gives him a character that would not have me. The immediate and warmer feelings of this album are largely a product of Josh and his way of working. He is much more a person of letters than me, so I feel that the type of frankness of music is a bit of his influence. If he had not been a part of the album, he would probably have ended up sounding more obtuse and strange. That’s why I think collaborating is great, because you end up in unexpected places.
I notice much influence of the reggae in ‘Ferry Lady’, ‘Praise’ and ‘Ends Meet’. From there surely the joy is also coming.
Someone told me that it was Cumbia, in ‘Ferry Lady’ specifically. I understand what they are talking about, but I cannot say that this was the intention at all.
It made me think of the Dub version of ‘Reset’.
Of course. I feel that you can listen to a lot of the music that I like in several songs. ’50mg’ is half reggae, half country, at least for me. There is much of what we call classic rock in the United States. Like Badfinger or Thin Lizzy, something like that. Reggae, as you said, is a kind of fusion of many things that have meant things for me over the years, but I never got into a song thinking “I want to do this type of song.” It simply comes out like this.
In the past you have told us that your children do not understand your music, but I suppose that has changed.
Yes, my son told me that he would impress him to do a collaboration with Playboi Carti.
It would also impress me.
I thought I might try to send him the ‘playing the long game’. Do you know that song?
The truth is not.
It was a face B of ‘Buoys’. There was a lot of influence of the Trap in ‘Buoys’, but that song was too obvious, so I didn’t put it on the album. I thought I could work with Carti, but we’ll see.
Who is your favorite hip hop world artist?
I like carti. It was also very Young Thug. Those are two of my current favorites. I also like guys that sound a little older, such as Freddie Gibbs. I like everything The Alchemist does, but I also like new things. I feel that I am agnostic of genres. I never feel that I just like a type of music. In all there are things that seem great and others that seem less great to me. It is more about the spirit than the sound.
I took the subject because you’ve worked with your daughter at ‘Anywhere But Here’. How was the experience?
It was very professional. He did the job, and I thought he had written a beautiful piece. I thought I had gone very well and asked if I wanted to listen to him and said: “Nah.”
Oh really?
He doesn’t want to hear it, so that’s where I am. She wrote four poems and didn’t give her any subject or anything. I just told her to write something that meant something for her and that we were trying to work. There was one of them that lyrically fit with the material I had done. I think everything ended in an hour.
I don’t know why that song reminds me of David Lynch. As a ‘Twin Peaks’ of another era.
Interesting. Josh always called her the song by Boyz II Men.
After more than 30 years making music, how do you maintain a consistent vision? It is what we were talking about at first. Everything you do sounds exactly Panda Bear, even if it sounds different.
I guess it’s about following your smell. As long as you are not pretending, someone is going to answer. All this sounds very cheesy, but as long as you are doing it for the love of the game, I think you cannot be wrong. I hope that is the reason I still do it.
“I didn’t want to finish the album sadly because history is not autobiographical, but it is based on things that I happened, and my story did not end in ruin”
Have you been pretending without realizing it?
Yes. Those are the things that never end on the records, you know? When making a recording and listening to it again, there is a very specific feeling that I have and that I can’t find any other place in my life. It is like a very concrete reaction that I have to hear something and feel pleased or excited for it. That has never changed, since the first time I started doing things until now. It has always been the same feeling. You pursue this experience all the time and it does not always arrive. There are strange waves in which I feel that everything I do produces that feeling, and then there are three months in which I try and it does not come out, and the next day you try again. But in a way it is like chasing the dragon. You always know what the goal is. I guess as I feel that this is the dynamic, I cannot be wrong.
You will return to Spain in March with five other concerts. You do many concerts here, when the rest of the artists tend to ignore us.
Yeah.
But I don’t know if it’s a matter of proximity.
It is mostly proximity (laughs).
OK.
Although I like Spain. I like to play here. The shows are generally very good, but above all it is because I give certain directives to my manager, as I never want to drive more than four or five hours at the same time. I want to play every day. I don’t want to take days off.
Don’t you want to take days off?
I don’t like to take days off. I feel that there is a kind of impulse that is built on the tour and the free days ruin it. When it becomes routine and your mind begins to disconnect, when it becomes a kind of wiring, it is when the best things begin to happen in the concert, so I do not. It is hard for the voice, especially because I am a thousand years old, but we can avoid free days, I try to do it within reason. After seven or eight concerts, it is probably better for everyone to rest a little, but I can try to avoid it.
