Panda Bear and Sonic Boom – ‘A ? of When’ album review: psychedelia on drugs
Call me boring, but I’ve never actually smoked a joint in my life, nor taken any kind of drugs. Not that I need to do it now, to be fair.
The Skinny: In fact, I had to take a brief break between listening to Panda Bear and Sonic Boom’s latest album, A ? of When, and writing this, because the room was doing laps around me. I have admittedly used the phrase ‘swirling psychedelia’ a lot in my career so far, but boy, it has never been more appropriate than today.
It probably doesn’t help that we’re in the midst of a heatwave, but the album as a whole feels like that moment when you get up after sitting in the sun for too long – you’re hot, you’re dizzy, every noise is too loud, and you keep seeing different colours floating across your vision. Either that, or you’re coming down from a high.
The whole point is that Panda Bear and Sonic Boom, otherwise known as Noah Lennox and Pete Kember, have created their second collaborative album with a constant sway and swoon at its heart. Essentially, you need to imagine what it was like in the ‘60s, and then add in a shit tonne more drugs.
Even at that, you can fully understand what the course of this record is like. With ten tracks stretched out over the course of almost an hour, it’s warped and winding at best, a little laborious at worst. Opening with the smooth harpsichord waves of ‘Never Givin’ In’ and ending on the funfair romp of ‘Graveyard’, the spin never stops.
The parallels to the ‘60s don’t just stop with the psychedelic element, though. Take the track ‘Like a Moth to a Flame’ as the prime example, with an impressive Phil Spector-esque Wall of Sound having been built to a truly unclimbable height. This is all or nothing, and Panda Bear and Sonic Boom have, quite literally, thrown everything but the kitchen sink at it.
In certain areas, does this come across slightly like the sound effects you would press on the Casio keyboard at school just to annoy the teacher… The title track, for example, has a persistent wailing siren in the background that makes it impossible to listen to more than once in quick succession.
For this part, the lyrical strength is mostly lost, and the noise can be overwhelming. But it cannot be denied that Panda Bear and Sonic Boom have created a textbook definition of psychedelia for the ages. The Beatles will be eating their hats with their heads spinning round in circles, because even they couldn’t create something as trippy as this.
Standout Track: ‘Like a Moth to a Flame’
The Verdict: Don’t listen to this if you’ve got vertigo. And, even for those of us on the straight and narrow, you might need a darkened room and an anti-sickness tablet to deal with it. Layers of production and hazy sound are all well and good, but this is to the point where you’ll not know your head from your feet.
Release Date: July 10th, 2026 | Producer: Noah Lennox/Pete Kember | Label: Domino Records
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