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Noah Lennox has always been the most restless spirit in Animal Collective, a band hardly short on experimental ambition. But even by the standards of that gloriously unhinged Baltimore quartet, his third solo outing as Panda Bear represented a startling left turn into uncharted sonic territory. Released in April 2011, *Tomboy* arrived four years after the sun-drenched psychedelic pop of *Person Pitch*, an album that had established Lennox as a formidable solo artist capable of crafting hypnotic, sample-heavy soundscapes that felt both ancient and futuristic.

Where *Person Pitch* basked in the warm glow of Beach Boys harmonies and dub-influenced loops, *Tomboy* strips away much of that ornate beauty in favour of something altogether more primal and unsettling. The album emerged from a period of significant upheaval in Lennox's life – he'd relocated from New York to Lisbon with his family, seeking a quieter existence away from the pressures of his increasingly successful career. Yet rather than producing the pastoral calm one might expect, this geographical shift seemed to unleash something darker and more confrontational in his music.

The sonic palette of *Tomboy* is deliberately constrained, built primarily around Lennox's multi-tracked vocals, sparse percussion, and heavily processed guitar work. It's a sound that owes as much to early industrial music and krautrock as it does to the psychedelic pop that had previously defined his solo work. The influence of bands like Neu! and Can is palpable throughout, particularly in the way Lennox uses repetition not as a meditative tool but as a means of building tension and unease.

Opening track "You Can Count on Me" sets the tone perfectly – a lurching, hypnotic groove that feels like being trapped in a slowly revolving carousel. Lennox's vocals, processed through what sounds like a dozen different filters, emerge from the mix like transmissions from another dimension. It's simultaneously beautiful and deeply unsettling, a perfect encapsulation of the album's central tension between melody and discord.

The album's centrepiece, "Tomboy" itself, represents perhaps Lennox's most successful marriage of accessibility and experimentation. Built around a deceptively simple guitar riff that's been mangled beyond recognition, the song slowly accumulates layers of percussion and vocal harmonies until it achieves an almost trance-like state. It's the sound of pop music being deconstructed and rebuilt from the ground up, familiar enough to be engaging but strange enough to keep listeners perpetually off-balance.

"Slow Motion" pushes this approach even further, with Lennox's vocals stretched and warped over a grinding, almost mechanical rhythm. The effect is genuinely disorienting – like hearing a half-remembered melody through the walls of an abandoned factory. Yet there's an undeniable beauty lurking beneath the surface distortion, a testament to Lennox's ability to find melody in the most unlikely places.

The album's most immediately rewarding track might be "Last Night at the Jetty", which comes closest to recapturing the dreamy atmospherics of *Person Pitch*. Here, Lennox allows his natural melodic instincts fuller reign, crafting something that feels like a lullaby transmitted from a parallel universe. It's a brief respite from the album's more challenging moments, but one that demonstrates his continued mastery of more conventional song structures.

*Tomboy* divided critics and fans upon its release, with some lamenting the absence of *Person Pitch*'s immediate pleasures. Yet time has been kind to the album, revealing it as perhaps Lennox's most cohesive and adventurous solo statement. Its influence can be heard in the work of countless electronic and experimental pop artists who've followed, from FKA twigs to Oneohtrix Point Never.

More than a decade later, *Tomboy* stands as a fascinating document of an artist refusing to repeat himself, even at the cost of alienating his audience. It's an album that rewards patience and repeated listening, slowly revealing its secrets to those willing to submit to its strange logic. In an era of increasingly safe and predictable pop music, Lennox's willingness to venture into genuinely uncharted territory feels both brave and essential. *Tomboy* may not be his most immediately gratifying album, but it might well be his most important.