Panda Bear interview. Also no home.

Panda Bear

Before sitting down to compose a new song, Noah Lennox (a.k.a. Panda Bear) typically will decide beforehand whether he’ll bring the new creation to his band mates in the Animal Collective, or if he’ll try to flesh it out for a solo release.

“It’s sort of an instinctual feeling,” he says while taking a break from the Animal Collective’s month-long trip to Wavelab Studios in Tucson, Arizona to record the follow-up to “Feels” (Fat Cat). “There’s also a certain sensibility that I know some of the other guys won’t be so into … I can tell if it’s not something the other guys are going be excited about working on.”

His most recent collection, “Person Pitch,” doesn’t bear the emotional weight of its predecessor, “Young Prayers” (both on Paw Tracks), which despite its exuberance dealt primarily with the untimely death of Lennox’s father. “Person Pitch” collects a number of seven-inch releases and sounds as though Lennox holed himself up in his new home in Lisbon, Portugal with anti-depressants, an eight-track and some Beach Boys records. Turns out that’s not entirely the case.

What made you decide to move to Lisbon?

Noah Lennox: I met a girl there while we were on tour, and I don’t really believe too much in long distance relationships, at least not for very long because I had a couple of them and they were all disasters. I figured that either she had to move to New York or I had to move there, so I up and left.

Has the move put any strains on the Animal Collective at all?

Um, I was kinda worried about that. And I wasn’t the only one in the band (worried). I think it’s actually turned out to have more positives than negatives because we’re not around each other every day. When Dave and I were doing “Sung Tongs” (Fat Cat), and a couple records before that, we worked together at a record store and we lived together and we practiced together. I was with him for almost every waking hour of every one of my days. Then we’d go on tour together. You’re just around this person all the time. It wasn’t like we were punching each other or anything like that, but the time that the four of us have had away from each other, when we get together we’re so psyched to be together and make music together that the whole process gets sped up. Even though I was really worried about it at first, it’s really turned out to be a good thing. I’m certainly a much happier person than I was four years ago.

The track “Take Pills”—did you have specific medication in mind, or is it a metaphor for everything we ingest culturally?

All the words I write are pretty direct. I tend to like to write in phrases that aren’t too metaphor heavy or double-meaning heavy. Usually what I say is what it means. In that song I’m talking to myself and my mom. For a time we were both on anti-depressant drugs, and even though I do feel like the drugs really helped me get through a certain period of my life and helped me create habits of thought that were far more healthy and far more positive for me, as soon as I got on the drugs I was thinking about getting off them. I never wanted it to be something I relied on, even the doctor told me I had a certain kind of personality and needed to do this stuff all the time. I think my mom is still taking them, but the song is about us not doing that sort of thing, or feel like we have to do that sort of thing. I want to clarify. I don’t want to act like nobody needs them. I think drugs can be a very powerful tool for people.

Did the depression stem from your father’s death or was it more of a genetic thing?

I think it’s more of a genetic thing, to be honest with you. I think there’s only one member of my family who isn’t sort of a melancholic type. It’s kind of a tradition in my family, I suppose.

Is music a sort of therapy for you then? The Animal Collective stuff and your new solo stuff both sound very celebratory.

It is a bit, I’ve found, of therapy. Particularly around the time I started writing this music I was really tired of dealing with and thinking about negative stuff or feeling sad a lot. I guess it did directly follow my father’s death, which obviously was a super heavy time. Even on (“Young Prayers”) I wanted to try to focus on positive stuff. I did want to write something people would listen to and get really depressed about. Right around that time I started getting excited about making music that would make me feel good, and hopefully other people to.

I was wondering if you’re influenced by Brian Wilson at all as a songwriter. A lot of “Person Pitch” sounds like lo-fi The Beach Boys.

I think so. I certainly like his music and his production a lot. I like “Pet Sounds” a lot, and I like a whole lot of the later Beach Boys stuff where he was still writing a lot of songs and producing, but he wasn’t going on tour with them or a large part of the band after a while. I actually kind of prefer the super late period stuff to anything else. I should say that I don’t know his music or their music all that well. Most of the stuff I’ve heard is from other guys in the band because those guys have thousands of records and libraries of music. At home I have 10 CD-Rs or something in my house. I don’t really know anything about anything.

paw-tracks.com
2007 Person Pitch (Paw Tracks)
2004 Young Prayer (Paw Tracks)
2003 Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished/Danse Manitee w/Avey Tare (Fat Cat)