Panda Bear

Sometimes the simplest origin is the most fitting, and nowhere is this more apparent than in how Noah Lennox took the stage name Panda Bear for his solo work. An avid artist for most of his life, Lennox drew pictures of pandas on the covers of all his solo work as their artwork and sure enough, that became his stage name. Now I might just be reading far too much into this, but I think this makes a lot of sense. After all, Lennox’s music as Panda Bear is accessible to most fans of forward thinking pop music, just like how most people would be drawn to a record whose cover was a hand drawn picture of a panda.

However, when you take into account the fact that the image itself is also the name of the artist and the record, we get into the experimental territory that his music also occupies. Which is to be expected coming from an artist who counts Aphex Twin as one of his key influences. In fact, Richard James was one of the artists that got Lennox into electronic music while in his teenage years. He was so inspired by it that by the age of 20 he’ recorded his first full length album as Panda Bear. Along with his childhood friend and Animal Collective bandmate Deakin (A.K.A Josh Dibb), he created his own label, Soccer Star Records, to release that very record, and began a long and artistically fruitful career with it.

Since then, Lennox has been very successfully able to juggle his solo work with his growing fortunes in Animal Collective. Five albums later he’s arguably just as respected for his solo work than anything he’s done in AC, even catching the ear of Jeff Magnum, who asked him to perform at the 2011 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival the Neutral Milk Hotel mainman was curating. Lennox sits at an enviable position, critical acclaim, a dedicated fanbase, a succesful band and a solo project that can equal anything his main act does. It’d be infuriating if it wasn’t so good. Highly recommended.