Panda Bear & Sonic Boom : A ? of When
If you’ve been curious to hear Panda Bear and Sonic Boom‘s sophomore album A ? of When before actually buying a copy, you’re either going to have to know someone who already has it or convince your favorite local record store clerk to spin it while you loiter. In other words, it’s not on streaming (even Bandcamp—though you can download it), a conscious choice from the collaborative duo that doesn’t apply to their previous outing, 2022’s Reset, or either artist’s respective back catalogs. But it’s easy enough to see Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, eventually getting here; he is, after all, the artist who once proclaimed that “all I need is four walls and adobe slats for my girls,” and who just last year released a collaboration with Cindy Lee, another artist who circumnavigated Spotify’s insidious algorithm only to end up on the receiving end of buzzed-about live shows and critical acclaim.
Dropped right in the depths of summer amid worldwide heatwaves, A ? of When is as ideal an album for literally touching grass as you’re likely to hear as the mercury skyrockets. Following a similar approach to the joyful, old-school rock ‘n’ roll influenced Reset, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom maintain a similar foundation of Beach Boys and Roy Orbison while steeping these songs in even richer arrangements of pedal steel, steel pan drum, and most importantly, mesmerizing cascades of Mary Lattimore‘s harp. From the stunning, slow-burning psych ballad that opens the record, “Never Givin’ In,” to the buzzing drones of “Something Like Dreaming” and the swirl of samba that drives “Revive Him,” A ? of When is a nourishing headphone feast. It’s not just that passive listening does a disservice to the album, it outright demands better headphones and speakers for the sake of absorbing all of its intricate moving parts.
It’s hard to disentangle the album’s conspicuous lack of digital presence from the alternate sense of exhaustion and enchantment that permeates the album. Amid 10 immersive tracks, half of which approach or surpass five minutes in length, the duo nonetheless offer familiar expressions of fatigue for anyone ready to throw in the towel in this technocratic world. The album’s opening line is “It’s likely that the jig is up,” and Lennox returns to the phrase “...if only I could, but I can’t” in “Revive Him.” And in the organ drenched garage-pop closer “Graveyard,” they shrug off certain advantages as neither necessary nor even desirable: “Got the fast track, but I just can’t walk it/Got the last laugh, but it wasn’t funny.” In the end, it’s the possibility of discovery that offers delight: “Take me to the place I’ve never been.”
If there’s a single message to be taken away amid the tangle of joy and resignation on A ? of When, it’s the one that crops up throughout the title track: “Keep tryin’.” When you’re an artist in an increasingly unfriendly landscape, that means denying access to the machine. As listeners, however, we’d do well to follow their lead and engage with what they’ve made the old fashioned way, whether that’s popping a CD into a Discman or popping a cassette copy into your deck, turning everything else off, and playing it loud.
Label: Domino
Year: 2026
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Panda Bear & Sonic Boom : A ? of When
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