Panda Bear - Buoys

Bandcamp Daily

Noah Lennox presses the reset button on his latest LP, mining trap and dub to create deeply human narratives.

Pitchfork 76

Noah Lennox finds solace in solitude on his fourth solo album as Panda Bear, stripping the instrumentation down to just a handful of sounds to create an unusually unified listen.

Drowned In Sound 70

As this decade now begins to draw to a close itself, Panda Bear offers his most minimal form of psych experimentalism so far. Like Tomboy in 2011, Buoys is a record that leans heavily on the use of something called a guitar, a machine that Noah Lennox may once have played a role in de-popularising in his community. He has certainly rarely used it as conventionally as he does throughout this album.

The nine tracks that comprise Buoys are disarmingly straightforward, a rare glimpse into the unaltered state of Lennox. His acoustic guitar plays the role of his confidante, a virtual 31-minute conversation between vocal chords and fingers, as honest and personal a document as he has ever produced. “In the space between/Comparisons to you/Us, the odd frustrated crowd/So vile,” go the self-damaging lyrics to ‘Dolphin’, to be pep talked back into élan by the following track, ‘Cranked’: “Guy on the ropes/Don’t give up hopes”.

We are a long way from the dense production complexity of 2007’s Person Pitch. Found sounds and characteristic electronic splutters are sprinkled throughout Buoys, but in such sparing quantities as to provoke gentle synaptic flashes of the Panda Bear of old, rather than the full immersion. There is a classical singer-songwriter emerging from the haze here, one that still talks in riddles, but that wants to reach out. “Want to tell you/That I want to tell you…” is the lyrical cycle that Lennox rolls through at the climax of ‘Token’ a number of times, never getting to the point.

There is a gentleness at the heart of Buoys, but there is a sense of inner turmoil too. Over weepy strings and his ever-present finger-plucking, ‘Inner Monologue’ features a female voice heavy-breathing and sobbing, whilst Lennox sings, “One to one/I can’t become”. The track, like most here, is blessed with a simple melody that charms and cradles the listener, an increasingly inviting hook on repeated listens, but in that sense it is no different to any previous Panda Bear/Animal Collective release. The change is that now, without the erratic arrangements and wacked-out production, the melodies have an unobstructed path into our consciousness.

That this set of songs with a gentle, personal musical touch and therapeutic lyrical themes should be titled Buoys can be no accident; these are actually little nuggets of music that could offer solace to somebody who feels that they are sinking. They are certainly light enough to float, and, if you will forgive one last crass metaphor, they may just provide a navigational guide to safety for anyone stranded in dangerous waters. Now, when could you ever say that before about a Panda Bear album?

The Guardian 60

(Domino Recordings)

Noah Lennox, whether on his own as Panda Bear or with his Brooklyn band Animal Collective, has a knack for meshing lustrous electronics into densely textured, hallucinatory scenerios, aided by his brightly lit, boyish coo. The latter’s seminal album Merriweather Post Pavilion turns 10 this year and was an epic feat of indie experimentalism that hasn’t, wrote Pitchfork recently, been surpassed.

No doubt that anniversary was at the back of Lennox’s mind when he made Buoys. His sixth solo album is remarkably more muted than his previous work. Lead single Token and its Lemon Jelly-like sampledelia throws back to Merriweather, a spiritual successor to the joyful rush of My Girls, but otherwise Buoys offers a sort of deconstructed R&B that focuses on repetition and restraint.