Panda Bear's Memories Of Australia: Meredith, A Cow Costume & Possibly Acid

When we get experimental rocker Panda Bear – aka Noah Lennox – on the phone, he’s just about to put his two kids to bed, because it’s the “end of [his] day here” in Lisbon, Portugal.

Even though he permanently moved to the vibrant European city 14 years ago, he can easily recall how he was feeling when he chose to leave New York City, the adopted home of his bandmates in Animal Collective. “I knew I wanted to leave New York, but I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I just thought I didn’t want to be there anymore.” 

Lennox remembers feeling “anxious” in the Big Apple – so when the band spent a couple days around a festival slot in Lisbon, a city he’d never visited, he took the opportunity to take a kind of “quasi-vacation”. “I just really liked it in the city. I remember stepping off the airplane just feeling like, ‘It feels good, it seems like a cool place.’ And then I met a girl here [fashion designer, Fernanda Pereira]. 

“In those two days, I met a group of people, one of which was this girl. She came to visit me after we hung out for a day or two. She came to New York and I came here for maybe a week, and then I thought, 'I'm gonna move there,' so off I went. And here I am.”

Lennox can see that the city of Lisbon seeps into the record, but can’t pinpoint in what way exactly. “I feel like environment always kinda sneaks its way into things that people create, whether they want it to or not.

“There's like a light quality to the music that I can definitely tell it's from Lisbon - I can see that.”

The desire to move to Lisbon feels linked in some way to Lennox’s desire to always be innovating musically, whether with Animal Collective or solo. 

“I guess I feel like it's to try to keep the ball rolling creatively. I don't mean to knock creative people who are just trying to refine one thing, I don't think that's any shame in that game, but I guess I'm just restless as a creative person. I like to put myself in situations or environments that I'm not entirely comfortable with because I feel like for me that typically produces the more interesting results.”

"I'm pretty sure he was tripping on acid or something and he started crying in the middle of the interview."

The first single from Buoys, Lennox’s forthcoming Panda Bear record, due out in February, Dolphin, shows that sense of progression, with Lennox largely dropping the layered, textured vocals of his earlier work like 2015’s Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper. 

There wasn’t some lyrical reason Lennox eschewed a more dense vocal style. He acknowledges that the vox are more “discernible” but that’s “neither here nor there”. Instead he was looking to up the “quality of the sound”. “I felt like I'd done this sorta style of producing vocals for a long time that I was kind of tired of: I wanted to do it in a new way.

“I used to stack vocals a lot and do harmonies and the vocal element of the song would be this thing that was a composite of many vocals, which were all mine, but it was a composite of many moments of singing, and I wanted to try [something else]. 

“[2018 EP A Day With The] Homies at first was supposed to be just a singular vocal take sorta thing but I couldn't find a way to do it, and then on Buoys it's done a little bit.”

Lennox is “excited” to be touring Australia as Panda Bear for the first time this month, playing sets in Sydney, Melbourne and at Meredith Music Festival. Still, it’s not his first time playing to audiences Down Under - he looks back fondly on touring Australia with Animal Collective, recalling the “unique experience” of playing Meredith in 2009. 

“I remember an interview that we did after the show there more than the show itself: this guy was talking to us and I feel like he was dressed up in like a cow costume. I'm pretty sure he was tripping on acid or something and he started crying in the middle of the interview. I think he was talking about his parents or something. It was certainly a very memorable event. He was ok, it didn't end badly. It was not your everyday kind of thing.”