All of Lennox’s albums inside and outside Animal Collective are defined at first by a loose concept or set of parameters that inevitably shift over time. Grift was no different, with the idea that Dibb and Lennox would record the tracks as “straight ahead recordings” and then “then kind of blur them or deconstruct them.” 

“I thought all of it was going to wind up like that, but as Josh and I started working on it, getting the arrangements right, and trying to make things as efficient as possible in terms of the arrangement and the songwriting, we just kind of felt like the songs were good as they were. They didn’t really feel like they needed to grow into anything else, so most of them just sort of stayed that way,” he says.

The result is Lennox’s most pop-oriented and accessible set of songs, leaning into the Beach Boys influence that has been, at times, overstated by the press. But here, the vocals are upfront, stacked with gorgeous harmonies. The instrumental palette recalls, at times, the sunniest of ‘60s psych-pop. 

Lennox says the album is directly inspired and informed by his collaborative 2022 album with Sonic Boom, Reset. It’s also an outgrowth of the post-pandemic Animal Collective period, where the band nixed the electronic experimentation of its best-known work in favour of a more traditional rock-band set up on 2022’s Time Skiffs and 2023’s Isn’t It Now? Like those albums, Grift incorporates the past into a set of songs that still feel fresh, organic and forward-thinking. Deakin stated it best in the promo materials for the album: “Sinister Grift feels like the songwriter I’ve known for over 30 years, but also feels like some sort of new chapter for Noah.”

It’s also an appropriately titled album, given the state of U.S. politics. On the same day this interview took place, there were media reports that billionaire Elon Musk had gained access to the U.S. Treasury. The grift’s on and it doesn’t seem all that positive. 

Lennox, however, says the title is more coincidental than anything – he’d had the name of the album five years before he started working on it and liked the sound of it. He says that the title and the lyrical content of the album reflect the illusions we all have in our lives, “that we can avoid things like regret, or mistakes, or hurting ourselves, or other people causing pain.” 

He says that, since 2015’s Panda Bear vs The Grim Reaper, he’s tried to make the music more relatable to the common experience, rather than drawing from the personal experiences he presented on tracks like “My Girls” or “New Town Burnout.”

“It’s still really important to me that there’s some sort of meaning in the song, or emotion, or something I’ve thought about that’s very real or meaningful to me, but I like to kind of fictionalize the thing, or mythologize the thing – invent characters in the songs that are me, but also aren’t me,” he says. “If the thing exists in this place between the audience and myself, then hopefully that means people can kind of find themselves in it a little bit.”

This is also the first solo Panda Bear album to feature contributions from all his bandmates, making it a sort of an unofficial Animal Collective album. There are also vocal contributions from Spirit of the Beehive’s Rivka Ravede, as well as the the only guitar solo committed to record in the Animal Collective Musical Universe, courtesy of Cindy Lee, on the album’s lead single, “Defense.”

The single marked a notable shift in Lennox’s sound when it dropped and is easily the most rock’n’roll song he’s released under his solo moniker. It’s also a sound that’ll be expanded on during the upcoming tour for the album. 

“Even before we started recording, I knew these songs were going to resemble a more band-type of energy,” he says.

Featuring what Lennox calls his “all-star band” – which will feature Lennox playing traditional lead man on vocals and guitar, and will include Ravede and former Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti bassist Tim Koh, among others – the tour will explore songs from deep into Lennox’s solo catalogue. New songs will be mixed in with old cuts that will be arranged for live instrumentation for the first time ever. 

“When it’s just me, I think a couple steps ahead and I have the whole thing sort of mapped out in a way, so it’s a lot less surprising,” he says. “Playing with the band, somebody might play a part a little bit different, and you can sort of join up with them, or you can try to take it in another direction. It’s way more flexible and feels way more alive to me.”

Lennox plans to tour with the band well into 2026, with several legs of a North American tour scheduled for 2025. Whatever happens after that, he says, is “a big empty space.” 

“I’m not sure any of us [in Animal Collective] can stop, really — I certainly can’t,” he says. “I’m not sure I’ll share music forever, but doing the thing has become such a routine part of existence for me, that anytime – even for a couple days – I stop making music, I feel kind of lost and sort of depressed, if I’m honest.”