Panda Bear - "playing the long game"

After dropping his new album Buoys earlier this year, Panda Bear is back with a new, stand alone single called "playing the long game."

While Buoys felt like a return to Young Prayer era Panda Bear, the groove on the latest track from Noah Lennox is a bit more inline with his hip-hop influenced Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper (a record many excluded in favor of Tomboy on their best of the decade lists, but his best following the immaculate Person Pitch, IMO). Opening with a trap-style beat, the song finds Lennox using his traditional layered vocal approach and the shift away from the acoustic affair of his latest album is a welcomed return to classic form. Again working with Rusty Santos (producer on Person Pitch and Buoys), Lennox said “the song is about a brief series of thoughts I had one morning about who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m going. Hope you enjoy it and hope all’s well.” It's a bumping track that is probably the first time Noah has made something that feels more like a retread than a new step forward, but that's actually a compliment and not a dig at the direction of his sound. If this is where he's going and what he's doing, all really is well.