Panda Bear

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper

[Domino]

January 9

Both solo and in Animal Collective, Noah Lennox's album cycles are unconventional: He tends to tour first and record later. That means fans who caught his tours last year have already gotten a preview of much of the material on his new album, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper. As many as nine of the album's songs have turned up in live bootlegs, albeit under provisional titles. His first album since 2011's Tomboy, Reaper was recorded in his adopted home of Lisbon, with Sonic Boom assuming an amplified role as co-producer. With a title that nods to King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and a breakbeat-heavy sound indebted to the Chicago hip-hop beatmaker 9th Wonder, the album finds Lennox grappling with the onset of middle age and the fickleness of the creative muse even as he explores some of the most ecstatic melodies of his career. —Philip Sherburne