Lisbon Calling

For Panda Bear, known in the human kingdom as Noah Lennox, moving to Lisbon changed everything. Widely recognised as the drumming and harmonising quarter of Animal Collective, Lennox relocated to Portugal to begin anew. "I moved here for a girl," he says, "and it's worked out pretty good."

Major events in this new country, most notably the birth of his daughter, have profoundly influenced his latest solo album, Person Pitch. "I've gotten a little bit older and had to deal with slightly more adult situations," he explains. "I've got a lot of responsibility thrust upon me lately."

Yet Person Pitch reflects this influence in a light way. Indeed, responsibility seems to have liberated Panda Bear from a commitment to austerity. His prior album, 2004's Young Prayer, saw Lennox grappling with loss. Recorded in the room where his father passed away only a few weeks previously, Young Prayer is suffused with mourning.

"Those sessions were really fucking intense..." Lennox recalls. "We recorded the whole thing in about two days. It was a pretty powerful environment." The album remains a stunning summit of this decade in music.

Compared to Young Prayer, Lennox says Person Pitch is, "like night and day." Listeners may be initially struck by the body of the sound. Rather than the sparse acoustic arrangements of Young Prayer, Lennox's new songs are lush. This is another result of his move to Lisbon: packing up denied him access to much of his equipment. "I didn't have a whole lot of money to ship a bunch of crap out here," he explains, "so it sort of limited me as to what I could use."

The consequence was a new focus on sampling. Lennox went searching for sounds, and let their arrangement dictate the music he laid overtop. On Person Pitch, his Brian Wilson-informed harmonies thread through a patched tapestry of samples, many of which were lifted from free sound-effect sites. "There's a lot of sweet stuff out there," he points out. The result is an album that renews his passion for rhythm and is an early contender for record of the year.

Person Pitch displays a diversity not present on any previous Panda Bear or Animal Collective album. Here, Roy Orbison rubs shoulders with reggae, and Gregorian chant hymns into noise. Lennox denies that he acquired more eclectic listening habits during the recording. "I'm kind of the stupid one in Animal Collective," he admits. "I don't listen to music so often. I don't have a record player and I don't have a stereo system. I feel like there's hardly any music I really dislike." The album comes packaged with a testament to this: a page of thank you credits addressed to artists from Kylie Minogue to Ghostface Killah.

Throughout Person Pitch, Lennox works with the aesthetics of the dub/dancehall genre, something he says he was "wary of doing" earlier in his career. But on this record, "I really wanted to try my own version of it. I've always loved the way dub records are produced, how perfect it sounds to me. I feel that's my sensibility about music."

Striving for a precise sound is a recent concept for Lennox. "I never would've done that before," he states, "I used to just wing it." The influence of his young daughter finally taught to him to be patient with production. "I've been surprising myself with how hard I work lately," he says. "I feel like that's a product of having a kid; having to deal with her when she's making mistakes, and not just lose your temper and go crazy."

Panda Bear's ultimate aim is to get Person Pitch into the dance clubs. "It probably won't," he concedes, "but that's my dream." This aspiration is an extension of his newly-realized dub production values: "I really love how that music is geared for the dance floors right from the studio."

Can he really envision people dancing to Person Pitch? Panda Bear proudly says, "My daughter definitely gets down with it a little bit."

Michael LaPointe has posted the transcript of this interview at: http://www.mikelapointe.net/pandabear.html