Panda Riot at Empty Bottle!

It feels good to say new things about familiar bands. The new things that evolve you see in a longer context. Seeing the music breathe is important. Imagine yourself a century ago. The live performance is all there was. Any way, so here is Panda Riot at Empty Bottle. Too routine you say? Why so many times? It has its perks. It means seeing them open for School Of Seven Bells, Warpaint, Magnetars. I always crave wanting to know the long view of a band that I like. You do that by "too many" times. They have this casual cheeriness. They don't over sell anything.
They don't get into costume or anything. They are the grown up adopted children of urban faeries. The music of urban magical realism. So Panda Riot played a new song not on either CD they have out. I think they called it "Valiant Unicorns" or was it "Valium Unicorns". I can be wrong about the Valium but do imagine it, a unicorn in rehab over a valium addiction.


Hilarious, it's like modernity finally brings down our mythological creatures. But once again I probably got the name wrong and I'm just going on about the hope that I am not. So I listened to this new song. I liked it. And it gets me real curious as to how they will continue to evolve with the next CD. Confuse it for one of their older songs I could not. It seems to sustain the slightly faster cardio of the "Far And Away" EP. They are not in a rut of sounding the same with each song. Anyway, I noticed they got a drummer as well as the drum machine. That one extra singer they had for a while was not there. I could have asked Rebecca about it, but I did not. I did want to, but I thought perhaps to ask would be intrusive. As a fan of Panda Riot the details begin to stick out and so you wonder but you still enjoy the show. The audience was big casual attentive. The band introduces themselves. That's normal, right? But it always seems to me as if they have to re-introduce themselves in a venue that has them all the time. So I wonder if they felt the audience was new for them. Faces were mostly turned toward the stage listening and all. I did not get the feeling that Panda Riot was being ignored. Some people even danced. I think they got the most attention out of any band that night including the headliner. I noticed how the entire band put one blue war paint on their faces. Again, I didn't ask. I left it between the band. And I was ok with the mystery of it.

Zig