Panda Bear – Buoys (LP – New)

Vinyl LP pressing. From the opening minutes of Buoys, Noah Lennox’s sixth solo album as Panda Bear resembles something both wholly new and intimately familiar to fans and followers of the musician and Animal Collective member’s body of work. Lennox’s bright, sincere voice is still front-and-center, along with his beatific approach to melodic structure and vocal phrasing – but there’s miles of space surrounding it, a guitar and a few textured samples here and there fleshing out Buoys’ dubby sparseness. The off-white loveliness of his 2011 LP Tomboy is recalled, as well as the sampledelia of 2007’s landmark Person Pitch – but Buoys otherwise represents a surprising and intimately pleasurable new direction for an artist who’s embraced not repeating oneself as it’s own creative ethos.