And now, solo material from the only actual animal in Animal Collective…

[Video][Website]
[4.60]

Patrick St. Michel: The whole point of this is that it doesn’t go anywhere, but rather just spins in one big blunt-clouded circle — I mean, Panda Bear sings “He don’t want to get out of bed/unless it feels justified.” Still, it would have been neat had this done anything besides swirl around. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: This manages to retain a melody while still sludging along to accurately depict a state: a bitter state, a hungover, churning-bellied and loathing-brained state, where you’re certain that your future, prospects, gumption, and brain cells are slowly dissolving into chyme. Happily for me (if not Panda Bear), “Mr. Noah” is much easier to avoid.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The guitars are loud, so that’s nice, I guess. As usual he lives and dies by distortion and mixing tricks, for without them he dies.
[4]

Cédric Le Merrer: The “ey-ey-ey” and “uh-uh-uh” at the end of each line sound like me trying to sing both the lead and background parts of a Temptations song. But the thing is: I’m very bad. I guess the intent is to imitate the throbbing of the ugly mush that’s playing behind him, but that’s what Garage Band default presets are for, Mr. Panda Bear.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: What do people see in this pretentious, overworked, proggy bullshit? This is the epitome of current “college rock” in every negative way possible. 
[1]

Micha Cavaseno: The corniest record of 2014 perhaps. This isn’t musically experimental, this is the sounds of a true prat.
[1]

Anthony Easton: Panda Bear can never quite drop his pop aesthetics, which in my less generous moments makes me think that this gives a certain kind of listener, still not sure about pop, the chance to pretend that they are participating in the deconstruction while still maintaining pleasure. I think that there is a problem for another kind of listener, who only spends time with the pleasures of pop and is dismissive of spiky deconstructions. That this track makes me feel uncomfortable, but that I still cannot dismiss it wholly, rewards a difficult cleverness about the problems of pleasure. 
[5]

W.B. Swygart: Clinic do “The Crunch“, which on paper is very much the kind of newsletter to which I would like to subscribe, except the end result just sounds a bit too much like indigestion. I think I either need to be sleepier or drunker.
[6]

Brad Shoup: What a big ol’ baggy baby he’s become. Even without the video, I think I’d be getting the spins. On the chorus, he throws his lines down a short flight of stairs; it’s hard not to do a shoulder shimmy each time. He covers the floor with quicksand: a bass gullet re-digesting old Flaming Lips voices and a “Sport”-y drumkit. But like usual, his pasty vocal is what drags the song forward. It’s not like music is lacking for a safe solipsistic space — and it’s definitely not as if this is some bold direction for pop, indie or otherwise — but I got caught in the disingenuous-naïf vibe. This time.
[7]

Danilo Bortoli: Panda Bear knows a thing or two about creating — and then inhabiting — musical worlds full of places even the most reckless listener can get lost inside of. 2007’s Person Pitch proved that. But it seems like, after Tomboy, his last album, melancholy started to show up in unusual places — and, even though the dense sampling, you could begin to hear his sadness. He was unashamed and careless, even unabashed. “Mr. Noah” takes this to a new level, I think. “Mr. Noah” resembles a preparation to actually talking about demise and grief, by making up characters in songs like this one in order to make its narrative more credible. But it also has something that has always been a significant part of Noah Lennox’s music: the almost embarrassing playfulness he can surround his songs with, the easygoing feeling which contaminates the storytelling. This is going to be hard to believe, but right now I can’t help but to think this is Panda Bear’s return to Strawberry Jam — both sonically and aesthetically — which can only mean one thing: this is his most passionate, ecstatic creation in years.
[9]