Panda Bear

Panda Bear (a.k.a. Noah Lennox) is a swooping and sweet foil to the more devilish Avey Tare in Animal Collective, the beloved indie outfit that has grown by leaps and bounds the past couple of years. Things started to get really interesting when Panda Bear moved to Portugal—for one thing, he made Person Pitch, a solo album that ranked among 2007’s best records by any conceivable metric. It’s beautiful and buoyant and graced with the kind of self-dubbed vocal harmonizing that Panda Bear has turned into a mystical art, but it also sprang a crowded field of derivative pop-savvy artists. As a result, Panda Bear’s latest, Tomboy, doesn’t have the thrill of discovery its predecessor had; instead, Lennox has perfected the genre he helped create, while setting himself apart from it.

Updated 09/21/2011