Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper

Panda Bear - Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper
Critic Score
Based on 41 reviews
2015 Ratings: #91 / 1021
User Score
Based on 625 ratings
2015 Rank: #280
Liked by 20 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Arts Desk
Day-glo drumbreaks and crayon-coloured melodies surprise and dazzle.
90
Exclaim!

By immersing himself even deeper into the world of dub music and its equally minimalist and maximalist tones and tropes, Grim Reaper sounds stronger than anything he's accomplished so far.

90
AllMusic
Striking a balance between hypnotic pop and cloudy soul-searching, the album delivers all the ends of the spectrum Lennox has spent years perfecting, giving fully realized and refreshingly jubilant examples of a type of pop music so distinctive to its creator, he ends up in a class by himself.
90
Loud and Quiet

It may well be his best yet. It’s certainly his most interesting.

87
Pitchfork

More streamlined than Person Pitch and more rhythmically robust than Tomboy, Grim Reaper is Panda Bear’s toughest, grimiest, and funkiest album to date.

85
Northern Transmissions

Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper is steeped in melody and emotion, and challenges the listener without alienating them. Mark this another consistently good entry into Lennox’s catalogue.

85
Paste
Not only does Panda Bear wipe away any fears of having lost his creative juices on his latest LP, he also has made one of his most widely appealing and accessible works yet.
85
Under the Radar

From its bubbling textures to its soaring vocals to its skittering beats to its careful sampling/instrumentation, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper serves as a fine reminder that Lennox remains one of music's most gifted melodists.

85
The 405

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper is not the private masterpiece that Person Pitch turned out to be, but it might be the final triumphant salute to an unforgettable chapter in Lennox's career.

84
Resident Advisor

Across the album's 13 tracks, Lennox combines the sample-based psychedelia of his past efforts with stark songcraft and swampy electronic backdrops that reach back to Animal Collective's masterwork, Merriweather Post Pavilion.

83
Pretty Much Amazing

Grim Reaper is Panda Bear’s most aggressively electronic work to date, full of clattering rhythms and corroded keyboards, no computer-derived sound or structure permitted to masquerade as anything other than what it is. But this makes it, oddly, his most embodied work, too.

80
The Guardian

There’s nothing radically new here, which means it doesn’t have the same jolting appeal as Person Pitch. But rather than repeat himself, Lennox has successfully honed his sound.

80
Billboard

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, Lennox's fifth studio LP, is his most direct and accessible statement yet: There are no austere synth drones, no waterlogged pseudo-homages to Super Mario 64.

80
Clash

One of the songwriter’s most overtly gorgeous works, it finds Panda Bear easing into new ground while maintaining his near effortless melodic touch.

80
The Line of Best Fit

Whereas 2011's Tomboy sought to clear up some of Person Pitch's alluring sonic murk, Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper is an audaciously maximalist assault on the senses.

80
Uncut

His work is possibly the most interesting as a collision point between hippy music old and new.

80
Mojo

This is a more colourful record than its predecessor, but it’s troubled, too.

80
NOW Magazine

On first listen, the album as a whole seems repetitious - there aren't any 12-minute odysseys like on breakout album Person Pitch - but its diversity reveals itself with multiple listens.

80
The Skinny

Lennox has a remarkable ability to craft wonderful vocal hooks from the air and build them like blocks of Lego, sustaining the stunning spatial awareness elsewhere.

80
DIY

His fifth solo effort ‘Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper’ guzzles down 90s hip-hop inspired drum programming, vocal auto-tune and cyclical loops. The result is more disconcerting than anything Lennox has done before.

80
FACT Magazine
Panda Bear’s fourth full-length is a mature album of peace and reckoning, one that weaves ghostly textures, plumbs watery depths, but ultimately happens on something comforting and tranquil.
80
SPIN

Grim Reaper is an unedited adventure of blossoming soundscapes, vision-blurring, dissonant melodies, and cheerful robot dance numbers.

80
PopMatters
Since the beginning of his career, Lennox’s best music has put his beautiful, haunting melodies centerstage, but here they’re more obscured and deformed than ever, making for an equally difficult and rewarding listen.
80
musicOMH

Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper is often blissful electronica for both the heart and the brain.

75
Consequence of Sound

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper rides high on his proven strengths, but doesn’t exactly explore new territory.

70
Slant Magazine

After the gloomy, monochromatic Tomboy, the catchy, blissed-out buoyancy of Grim Reaper is rather refreshing, showing Lennox staking out a middle ground between quirky abstraction and pop accessibility.

70
Complex
The result is Lennox's sharpest, poppiest, and most idea-packed LP to date—it's also his most explicitly personal record, not to mention one of the first truly great albums of 2015
70
No Ripcord

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper can be a particularly infuriating listen since it wanders between moments of greatness and utter tedium. Lennox is a more capable songwriter when he shows some restraint and elegance, and yet he feels the need to return to those more jumbled moments that suffer from patchy results.

70
Drowned in Sound

The whole effect is unsettling, with the saccharine-sweetness of Panda Bear we know being somehow corrupted, psychedelic in a disconcerting mind melting rather than flower-power way.

67
A.V. Club

Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper doesn’t push boundaries so much as it delineates the contours of Lennox’s comfort zone.

60
Tiny Mix Tapes
As it stands, the album sounds like Panda Bear at the height of his unchecked, uncompromised (and, therefore, at times uninventive) powers.
50
Spill Magazine
Though Panda Bear’s daring choices are commendable, sometimes less complex options are the way to go.
ImpalaLT
81

Short Review

If you want a mix of Tame Impala type sounds mixed with some Animal Collective, this album is for you.

Favorite: Mr. Noah
Least Favorite: Sequential Circuits

charlie17
33

Eatin asian pussy all i need was sweet and sour sauce

StellaTheDiver
84

spoliers: Mr. Noah is Panda Bear

80

Esse álbum trás uma sonoridade mais Animal Collective na minha opinião, ele é mais fácil de digerir que os trabalhos anteriores, e é muito bom o resultado final

DrakeBonna
50

Really weak synth works, basic loops, weak vocals, and tinker toy tunes that go absolutely nowhere.
Boring.

Dpilly
67

“panda bear meets the grim reaper”

sequential circuits - 7
mr noah - 8
davy jones’ locker - 7
crosswords - 7.5
butcher baker candlestick maker - 9
boys latin - 8.5
come to your senses - 7.5
topic of cancer - 6
shadow of the colossus - 1
lonely wanderer - 5
principe real - 8
selfish gene - 7
acid wash - 6.5

avg - 6.7
rounded - 6.5

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Added on: October 23, 2014