Pitchfork: Panda Bear Talks Animal Collective, Solo Work

Panda Bear Talks Animal Collective, Solo Work
2007: When Animals Attack!

Like the endangered species from which he gets his name, Noah "Panda Bear" Lennox, does not hibernate. He's too busy chewing the bamboo shoots of musical creativity. (Terrible analogy. Just terrible. I'm sorry. I'll stop now.)

Although he and his band Animal Collective have laid relatively low in 2006, touring a bit and releasing just a smattering of tracks and a reissue, 2007 looks to be a blockbuster year for Lennox. In a recent interview, he updated Pitchfork on the status of Animal Collective's next album, the Animal Collective live box set, his own solo album, and many, many other projects.

Animal Collective's year will start off with the January 23 FatCat worldwide release of the People EP, previously available only on the band's just-wrapped Australian tour. As previously reported, it features the tracks "People", "Tikwid", "My Favorite Colors", and "People (live)".

Also in January, the band will begin recording the follow-up to 2005's Feels, at a studio in Tucson, Arizona. Lennox said that they hope to release the album in the fall, "but I couldn't say for sure." Although reluctant to reveal any potential song or album titles ("I have a feeling the other AC boys would be mad if I told you, just because we like to have the thing be new and fresh for everyone if we can"), he did say that "there will be some songs on the album that we've never played live. We wrote them and prepped them but consciously avoided playing them live so that they would be totally new for everyone on the album." Brief tours of America and Europe are in the works for the spring of 2007.

And speaking of Animal Collective in concert, Lennox offered an update about the AC live box set: "I'm really psyched about it and I guess I can speak for all of us in that respect," he said. "I don't know exactly when it will be released, as we're all being kind of relaxed about that part of it. I guess we feel like the Hollinndagain reissue just came out so it's no rush for us to get out another live recording type thing. But I imagine it will be done and out in the spring of next year, like May or something.

"It's going to be three LPs worth of jams: one side of our first New York shows and stuff from around the Danse Manatee time, one side of acoustic jams (including some recordings from home-- most of us used to live together and we would play quite a bit just around the house after work and on the weekends), one side from around the Here Comes the Indian time, one side of solo jams (I think this is mostly from shows that just Davey [Portner, aka Avey Tare] or I did), one side of what we called "The Pumpkin Trilogy" which is a three-part jam from around the time between Danse Manatee and Here Comes the Indian (same time as the Hollinndagain tour), and one side of live Sung Tongs." Whew!

Animal Collective are also working on a film project with director Danny Perez, the friend behind their "Who Could Win a Rabbit" video. Will it be Animal Collective's Purple Rain? Or their Glitter? We'll find out soon...

"We worked together for a while coming up with the scenes and parts and that sort of thing," Lennox said. "Then this past September we started filming it. Sometime in the next four months or so, after Danny's done editing all the footage, the AC will make the music for it."

As for the upcoming Panda Bear solo album, Lennox revealed that it will be titled Person Pitch and will feature the songs "Comfy in Nautica", "Take Pills", "Bro's", "I'm Not", "Good Girl", "Carrots", "Search for Delicious", and "Ponytail". [Side note: I really, really hope the second-to-last track is about the Natalie Babbitt book I read in fourth grade.]

If some of those track titles look familiar, well, that's no coincidence. Lennox has stuck to his plan to pre-release the majority of the album's songs as EPs. The first, "Comfy in Nautica" / "I'm Not", was released last year on UUAR. The second, "Bro's", will be released as a 12" on FatCat this coming Monday, December 4, overseas and on January 22, 2007 in the U.S. It comes backed by a remix of "Bro's" by Terrestrial Tones (aka Lennox's bandmate Avey Tare and Black Dice's Eric Copeland). The third is the previously reported Panda Bear/Excepter split, out January 23 on Animal Collective's own Paw Tracks label. It features Panda's "Carrots" and Excepter's "KKKKK"

Explaining the logic behind the EPs, Lennox said, "I've been excited about making music on my own for a little bit, so I thought I'd try and work piece-by-piece to make an album. This is about a year and a half ago, I would say. I was thinking it would be sweet to try and just do a song or a couple songs at a time and then release them as 12"s and then collect all of it at the end to make an album.

"I didn't want it to be disparate and all over the place, but I think the fact that I knew I was slowly making an album helped me keep it all together or harmonious in some way...I figured it would make me really focus on each song to make it good on its own like that. Plus I really like 12"s. Plus I thought it might be good to put out each one through a different label so as to both work with my friends somehow and to get the music out to different audiences if I could.

"You could make the argument that it's crappy to release an album that has 3/4 of it already released (in some form), but the album will be CD-only, so the only way to get a bunch of the songs on vinyl will be to get the 12"s. And the 12"s are kind of limited things, too."

Person Pitch was recorded by Lennox completely on his own, and is currently being mixed by Rusty Santos. The album's release date is still up in the air, however. "I'm hoping that the album will be released sometime in March and the sooner the better," Lennox said. "I've been a little bummed out that it's taken so long and I've had to wait for labels and strategic release dates and that sort of thing. I mean I totally understand why it's important and necessary, but I'm a little impatient because I've been working on the jams off and on for over a year."

Fans of the last Panda Bear album, Young Prayer, should expect some changes on Person Pitch. The former was made in the aftermath of the death of Lennox's father; that cloud didn't hang as ominously over the making of the latter. "It's way different but I wanted it that way for sure," Lennox said of the forthcoming album's sound. "Young Prayer was really heavy for I think everyone involved and I feel like it's not good to be that way unless it's really called for. I mean I was psyched to do it and I meant it all the way but I'd feel lame riding that vibe forever, if you know what I mean. So I wanted to do something far more casual."

Another change that influenced the sound of Person Pitch was Lennox's move to Lisbon, Portugal two-and-a-half years ago. "It's totally affected the music, but I think that's natural and unavoidable for anyone making anything," he said. "I feel like environment dictates style and mood and that kind of thing... [Lisbon is] a place that isn't in any rush to do anything or go anywhere. It's not the kind of place that checks its watch very often, if you know what I mean. I like that about it... "I kind of can't help making music that sounds like and that concerns what I'm doing and how I'm living. There's been a lot of mellow ease mixed with a lot of intensity and very serious decisions in the last year or so and the music sounds like that to me."

The move's impact on the record wasn't just spiritual, however. It was also technical. Lennox said, "I moved and didn't take much with me except for my samplers, so I did just about all the music with them. I recorded it onto the computer, although I only used the computer as a multitrack, like I didn't do any crazy processing or anything like that.

"I was excited about doing something I felt was performance-based and (like the AC typically does) I played all the songs live here (in Portugal) and on a tour with Ariel [Pink] over here (in Europe) before I started recording."

Panda Bear isn't the only Animal Collective member who's been keeping very busy with extracurricular projects. Avey Tare is currently on tour with Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, formerly of Múm, with whom he has been collaborating. According to the FatCat website, "In January, April and October, she and Avey Tare worked on recording a bunch of songs they had written in Paris in August 2005. They recorded vocals, piano and guitars on an 8-track and mixed them down on a cheap 2-track, and hope to have the recordings finished and released sometime next year."

Avey Tare and Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir dates:

11-29 Providence, RI - AS220 *
11-30 Toronto, Ontario - Sneaky Dees
12-01 Montreal, Quebec - Main Hall
12-02 Ottawa, Ontario - Mavericks #
12-05 Burlington, Vermont - Firehouse Gallery
06-12 Amherst, MA - Red Barn at Hampshire College

* with Peter Wright and Antony Milton
# with Hi Lo Trons