American art hit a reset in the mid-2000s, as musicians began to reinstitute experimentation and DIY ethos back into music. At the forefront of this artistic reformation was Animal Collective, a four-piece band whose jarring, melancholic sound collages were drenched in reverb.
Animal Collective took cues from psychedelia, freak folk, Beat poetry, and performance art, creating a new sound that embraced lo-fi production and sampling while resisting genre categorization. Their albums, notably 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, inspired the sound of indie rock for the next decade.
Animal Collective's Noah Lennox, also known as Panda Bear, has sustained a successful solo career pushing the AC's sampling, loops, and vocal harmonies into new places. On Aug. 12, Panda Bear released a new album in collaboration with longtime colleague Sonic Boom (a.k.a. Peter Kember), a founding member of pioneering shoegaze band Spacemen 3 who shares Lennox's love of looping and samples.
On Reset, Lennox and Kember sample '60s and '70s pop songs, and doo-wop harmonies, to amplify lyrics about love, longing, and loneliness. The Troggs' "Give It to Me" features prominently on "Go On," while Randy & the Rainbows' "Denise" is the bedrock of "Edge of the Edge," and "Three Steps to Heaven" by Eddie Cochran is the basis of "Gettin’ to the Point." The sleepy romanticism of these oldies created perfect fodder for the duo to sample for their own musical dreamscapes.
Lyrically, the two musicians used the pandemic to stay busy and build upon their shared musical interests. From their new homes in Portugal, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom produced an album of investigative, self-aware lyrics with buoyant, danceable beats. The blending of moods mirrors the anxiety and hopefulness we all had while locked in our homes during the global outbreak of Covid-19.
GRAMMY.com chatted with Lennox while he enjoyed an off day in Portland on tour. Lennox gave background on his easy, collaborative relationship with Kember, whether he will ever make a hip-hop album, and the surrealism of having a production credit on Beyoncé’s "Lemonade."
I know you and Peter Kember have been music pals since the Myspace days. What did you hope to accomplish on Reset together?
I can’t say that we set out for any big plan. It was the first lockdown wave in Portugal, and I found that working on music was the only way I could get my mind off the chaos and spiraling outside. So I leaned hard into work.
Pete had an idea for a while about using these sample loops from intros from songs to build songs out of. He sent me 30 or 40 of these things, and I would just run through them. Whichever one sparked an idea, I would start working on it. By the end of the day, I would have a blueprint of a song.
After I did four or five songs, I thought it would be cool if he sang lead on a few tracks. It grew from there. It wasn’t a plan. It was just something to do.
How did your prior relationship impact the collaborative process?
He and I had grown closer over time, both professionally and personally. So it seemed inevitable we would start making music together. The first thing we did was my album Tomboy, which he mixed.
On this one, I wanted to make it equal in terms of our input. We both had a really good time. I imagine we will make more like this.
How do you see the similarities and differences in your musical styles?
We have wildly different perspectives on how songs work or how arrangements and productions work. But there are important similarities that help us work easily together. Minimalism is one of them — we both like simple things and classic chord progressions.
As two musicians with a shared love of samples, what bands and influences did you want to mine on this project?
On this album, it’s harder to say. But on Person Pitch, which came out in 2007, mostly hip-hop stuff. Madlib, I was a really big fan of J Dilla too. Even the Dust Brothers, I loved how they sampled stuff. Public Enemy as well.
I’ve always noticed a hip-hop element to the sample-based songwriting of your career. How big of an influence is hip-hop?
I’m a huge fan of hip-hop. I have been since I was really young. It’s part of this trajectory of popular music that started with James Brown, where pop music became less about melody and more about rhythm. So these days, we talk about beats, and MCing is all about rhythm and rhyming. I dig it.
A lot of the early hip-hop they were using James Brown samples. There’s a really clear-cut line in that way. The SP-303, which I bought, I got because the producer Madlib said he made all of the album The Unseen by Quasimoto on it. If he made that whole album just on that, I wanted to see what I could do with it. So He directly inspired me to get the SP-303 [sampler], and that was what I made music off of for the next five years.
Have you ever thought about making a hip-hop record and collaborating with a lyricist?
I would love to! I feel like the results would be pretty weird. I would want to tweak the vocals a lot, like affecting or dropping out the vocals a bunch. I would like to do something with the rapper Navy Blue a lot. So many rappers, I think, are cool.
I feel like anything was possible once Animal Collective received a sample credit on Beyonce’s "6 Inch" record. How surreal was that?
That was a strange one. We were honored for sure. But it wasn't a proper sample. We heard the track, and we couldn’t hear it, but we were psyched all the same.
The video for "Edge of the Edge" is a hilarious critique of cell phone inundation. You are of the last generation not born with the internet as a cell phone baby. How present are these themes when making music?
It was definitely a big theme of the record. In terms of being an "online person" and how that’s affected us. While recognizing or wrestling with the power of it and recognizing how it's not so good for us. The song "Edge of the Edge" is the most explicit example of talking about that. It’s trying to grapple with social media, especially, and trying to be aware of the pitfalls of that stuff.
Some of the lyrics are melancholy, but the vibe feels very relaxed and leisurely, almost optimistic. How did you create that balance?
Well, it was dark times in the world. It’s still a dark time. A lot of the stuff that comes out of the songs comes from conversations Pete and I were having at that time. Both of us agreed that being negative and cynical about how bad things are, despite them being pretty bad, doesn't benefit anybody or help at all.
We wanted to make something that had an encouraging spirit and uplifted people. It was for us, making the thing. We thought, at best, it could be medicine.
Do you consider yourself an optimistic person?
Yes, generally. I am also a depressive. So it’s a weird juxtaposition I got going on.
There’s a looping effect in many songs on this album. It almost feels like these songs have no beginning or end, in the same way, dreams feel. Were you hoping to create an ouroboros feeling?
A lot of that decision making was Pete’s thing. But both of us [have] the idea of the fade-out suggests an infinite loop of the music. It continues in your brain even when the sound goes out. I like that sort of thing. I wouldn’t want every song to be that way, but it felt right with these songs.
The album’s title feels appropriate to our pandemic-riddled reality. So what do you hope the title evokes for listeners?
I don’t want to set expectations on what people want to feel. I certainly don't have any grand desires as far as somebody's experience with the thing. I’m happy if somebody listens to it and feels something or enjoys it in the moment. At a base level, I hope the music is some sort of communication and, as that, an embrace.
The Beach Boys comparisons have been run into the ground, but I’ve always wondered how conscious the evolution of their sound was.
I like the Beach Boys a lot, but there are a lot of other vocal groups I like too. It makes sense that the Beach Boys, being the most famous version of a pop vocal group, maybe the Four Tops, is a tough call is the touch point for that kind of music. But I wouldn’t cite them as the only vocal influence.
What in pop right now are you interested in?
I find it rewarding to keep tabs on what’s going on. Someone like Dua Lipa has a lot of songs I like. Justin Beiber had a couple of songs on the last record I dug. I think Rosalia is cool. Dua Lipa has that song, "Be the One," that I really like.
Do you ever see yourself collaborating with bigger pop acts on that scale?
I would love to do something like that. The one time I was lucky enough to do it was making stuff with Solange. That was the only brush with that sort of world I had. But I’m down.
How Hailee Steinfeld Is "Entering A New Space" & Paying Tribute To California With Her Next Project