Panda Bear
Sinister Grift
★★★★
DOMINO
Following the stripped-down sounds of 2019’s Buoys, Noah Lennox’s first solo LP in six years finds the Animal Collective man joined by each of his bandmates alongside Spirit Of The Beehive’s Rivka Ravede and Patrick Flegel’s glam alter-ego Cindy Lee for an album of woozy, cosmic city-pop. Yet behind the Beach Boys and Haruomi Hosono references lurks a precarious, suspended sadness.
Perfectly sequenced, Sinister Grift’s dubious uplift gradually falls away to reveal an exquisite melancholy introspection, the sound of optimism weighted by mooring hooks of sadness. On side two, the shimmering spectral cry of Left In The Cold gives way to Elegy For Noah Lou, six exquisite minutes of haunted magic-hour lamentation. With the final track, Defense, Lennox surrounds himself with multi-tracked voices and E-bow guitar effects, but the message is clear: all these protections are necessary, to stop the sadness getting in.
Sinister Grift is out 28 February on Domino.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
Tracklisting:
Praise
Anywhere But Here
50mg
Just As well
Ferry Lady
Venom’s In
Left In The Cold
Elegy For Noah Lou
Defense
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