Panda Bear - Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper

Panda Bear might be one faction of the notorious psychedelic gadabouts Animal Collective, but over the years he’s equally established himself as a solo artist. Over four albums Noah Lennox has bounded from bashed-up guitars to thick-hanging clouds of drone with the ease of a merry little toadstool-hopping Yoshi. His fifth solo effort ‘Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper’ guzzles down 90s hip-hop inspired drum programming, vocal auto-tune and cyclical loops. The result is more disconcerting than anything Lennox has done before, like a crunch corner yogurt with a split lid, or a tantalising ice-cold can of Rubicon with a busted ring-pull.

All the while it feels like there’s a shady, fairly unthreatening ghost holding a scythe in the background and peering over the whole album’s shoulder like an tenacious commuter trying to share your copy of the Metro. The beast of this record might be Death, but he’s the kind of ghostly caricature who chuckles heartily at the unsettling lyrics of ‘Boys Latin’s -“become an oaf again/ trip a lot, trip a lot” - and busts out an impromptu two-step to match the slouching grooves of ‘Come To Your Senses’.