Where we think of recording and music as a collaborative experience, there are those, now, challenging that conclusion. Panda Bear is proving you can do everything necessary to make a challenging, intricate album alone, but bringing friends along for the ride is part of the fun. Collaborations with Cindy Lee and Animal Collective are welcome sounds, but this is ultimately a solo piece. Paul McCartney has done it time and again, and so too have solo musicians reaching further and further into the instrumental void. Out comes Sinister Grift, an album which features an amalgamation of everything sweet about the neo-psychedelic past. Instrumental flourishes and a sense of new perspective from Panda Bear on old tones make up the best moments of Sinister Grift. Those soft suggestions of The Beach Boys’ well-layered instrumental style and harmonisations are heard on opener Praise, and the album just gets better from there.
Openness is key for Panda Bear. It drives the very best moments of Sinister Grift. A song like Anywhere but Here notes the well running dry, ideas presented not as a burst of flourishing enlightenment but as a finite resource. We can only put out so much in our lives and Sinister Grift is all about accepting this. Comfortable and relaxed notions on 50mg are ripped apart by the desire heard in the lyrics. This bait and switch, the suggestion of a laid-back tone and the heaviness of wanting more, is delightful. It is as big a part of Sinister Grift as it is a part of the fundamentals of Noah Lennox’s writing style. Heavy tones but a bright light at the end of the tunnel offering some hope rather than the oncoming train these songs would suggest. Sentimentality does not enter it, and the soft influences of reggae can be heard on Ends Meet. This is more in tempo and feeling than any of the lyrical choices made, but it remains a strong part of Sinister Grift.
Hear those tones again on Ferry Lady, and get whisked up by the stiff winds and the colder climate Panda Bear notes throughout. These are imaginative yet realistic moments, the doubts and highs of the modern world put to rights. There is a chance here for Lennox to remove himself from the darker tones which can be found in his discography. This is a new turn, a fresh and inspired change, with warm flourishes and a mellow tone running through. It runs the gauntlet of indie-like sentimentalities and comes through unscathed but battered by the very real experiences which form its best moments. There is still room for those darker occasions and Panda Bear uses the latter parts of Sinister Grift to suggest these lighter tones could slip just as easily into a horror soundscape.
He does well to manage the storm this could cause on Left in the Cold. That isolation right at the core is held together by some softer instrumental work, a sense of placement even in the abandonment is what keeps it from ripping apart your soul. Elegy for Noah Lu goes deeper, darker, than the rest of the album. Panda Bear is on hand to pull us out of this, to not forget the lighter, chipper sounds which preceded it. But Sinister Grift works on the suggestion of brighter times ahead, of a light at the end of the tunnel worth reaching. A seasonal change unfolds, and at a time when the clocks are poised to go back, where the days are getting longer, Sinister Grift feels like a soulful and warm reminder of just how important change, for the self and the sound of an artist, can be.
