Panda Bear

If Person Pitch had come from anybody else, the influences listed in the booklet would read like a big fuck you to critics like me, who reduce music to its antecedents. But this is Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) we're dealing with -- a gentle musician who possesses the singular ability to sound utterly unique while paying tribute in the process.

Person Pitch, in fact, makes Lennox's inspirations more explicit than ever before (this includes his work with both Animal Collective and Jane). The 12-minute "Bros" -- a tropical groove capable of a mellow hypnotism -- unfolds like a microscopically engineered mashup of breezy minimal techno and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Smile. This effect turns downright ecstatic on "Comfy in Nautica" and "Good Girl/Carrots"; Lennox's kaleidoscopic vocal overdubs and electro-tribalism -- encased as they are in simulated concert-hall reverb -- totally evoke the famed Les Troubadours du Roi Baudoin, a choir of Congolese children who in 1958 recorded "Missa Luba," an Africanized take on the Latin Mass. And like "Missa Luba," Person Pitch emits a wondrous white light as well as an earnest love for life and nature.