While trying to to find a parking spot remotely near the coffee shop where I’m currently writing this, in the midst of hurling profanities at everyone and no one all at once and calling my girlfriend to let her know it’d be a few minutes before I’d be joining her, Noah Lennox’s voice rose from my speakers like a trapped spirit to ask me “Are you mad?” over and over again. In the context presented, this would seem like an perfectly orchestrated taunt from whatever force in the universe controls what song plays when while I’m driving, but as the playful head bob sequencing from “Come To Your Senses” would have it, I was reminded of the importance of appreciating everything given and gained in life even through such moments of ultimately useless frustration.

And it’s that feeling of humility and self-awareness that permeates through all of Lennox’s, or rather Panda Bear‘s new album Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper, out now on Domino. Like Noah’s previous work sans Animal Collective, the lush textures and masterfully constructed layers that were present on 2007’s Person Pitch and 2011’s Tomboy have truly blossomed on this LP into a remarkable work of self-reflection and meditation on what is truly important in life.

With my 20s well underway and my love for Animal Collective and their respective works firmly established, this album comes out as sort of a devotional; it has quickly become something to come to and seek clarity when my anxieties and uncertainties become overwhelming. Lennox’s comforting vocals and aptness for assembling layers of synthetic samples and sounds envelop you like that one blanket you favor above all the others in your house. The centerpiece of the album, “Tropic of Cancer”, carries this unparalleled warmth as Lennox recounts the ordeal of losing his father to brain cancer in 2004 and journeys through his initial denial and then his final acceptance of the balance between life and death which, as the title would dictate, becomes the foundation for the album itself.

The album title has a narrative quality to it, too, and appropriately so. “Acid Wash”, the final track, is unabashedly triumphant and reassuring, as if our contemplative and troubled hero has indeed defeated Death himself. The experience presented therein for the artist as well as the listener has finished, and as Noah brings down the curtain with twinkling lights, there’s optimism and hope and self-realization within all involved. And it’s a magical feeling.