Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) and Sonic Boom (Pete Kember) announce their new album A ? of WHEN. Their second album together, A ? of WHEN, maintains the sense of musical play brought forth in their triumphant 2022 debut, Reset. It is built on loops of harp (Mary Lattimore) and sequences of steel drum, webs of pedal steel and even bits of a mariachi band. These are, of course, deliberate choices, sounds and textures they’ve never used and that offered a clear sonic break from the success of Reset.

But maybe more than ever, Sonic Boom and Panda Bear emerge through these 10 songs as two people with frank opinions about these times, with a real stake in the sway of the world. These tunes grapple with online exhaustion and pervasive depression, with political chicanery and ecological sustainability, all while advocating for respecting the power of luck and giving one another grace in a moment when very few of us actually know what the hell is happening. Has it ever been easier to complain publicly about something without trying to change it? Sonic Boom and Panda Bear are not content to gripe about circumstances or speculate about the fall on A ? of WHEN. The goal is for the music to create physical connections between people, to encourage them to enjoy a real experience in the world with it and each other.

A ? of WHEN is the follow-up to Panda Bear and Sonic Boom’s instant classic 2022 LP Reset and its two alternate versions, the Adrian Sherwood rework Reset in Dub and the Reset Mariachi EP featuring Mexico City’s Mariachi 2000 de Cutberto Pérez. The mariachis return for a couple tracks on A ? of WHEN, and the album also features contributions from harpist Mary Lattimore, British multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Sun O))), Ulver), and “Steel Witch” Zena Kay on pedal steel guitar. Alongside today’s announcement, the album’s title track is available to download. Despite how ebullient it sounds, with its bouncing beat and flute riffs and lyrics about kitty cats and flip-flops, “A ? of WHEN” is about that inexorable moment when all the shit we’ve fucked up finally catches up with us. A ? of WHEN is the sound of looking out at the world, sighing, and transforming it into ebullient songs with your friend, anyway.