Panda Riot

I've been knowing of them since I think 2007. Its 2014 and they finally have shirts. Really brilliant ones, a nice dark heather-ish gray with the logo of the new LP Northern Automatic Music that is out. Panda Riot will be playing Burlington Friday 2 May with Moritat. Its about time they run into each other, they circulate around often enough. Moritat's sound has been described as avant rock. Its fascinating to me actually that these bands should meet and play the same space, in the context of what baggage or subtext they bring with them. They both play a lot, and steadily produce new music. They sound compatible enough that they should have fans in common. For me, they represent the active live music culture in Chicago. Panda Riot you can identify as shoe gaze /dream pop. They are a moving target from there but there is a culture around to claim them....to put it crudely. For fuck sake we got The Shoegaze Collective on FB....which I'm a member of. Basically if the Pandas play or something relating to their music there is at least a group on Face Book that would pay attention to that. Hell, their music has been released in Japan, in their Tower Records. They have opened for Warpaint! Their latest is getting some serious attention from magazines and online publications, blogs....and I haven't shut up about them. And yet it often seems to me like they have to introduce themselves to every crowd. That can also just be that warped memory always wanting to stay on that underdog narrative. I always try to write about individual shows, and then I read some cool interview on them. And then next show a diminished crowd....and there's that underdog narrative wanting to recall it a certain way. Always half wanting them to blow up like Warpaint and tour around the world. I've had a good long time to hear the LP and songs continue to grow on me. Some of them tracks feel actually old to me, and thats because they played a lot of these songs before the recordings were made available. They were playing many when the only recorded work available was the first LP She Dares All Things and EP Far And Near. So it can feel like a rut and everyone loves them anyway. And I can look at you like you just walked into the lecture late, when instead you just dosed off.
  I think more of their own style is revealing itself to the audience slowly while behind that wall. Things evolve beyond the ways we have previously describe them. What you will hear tomorrow as the final recorded product is decided today. Rebecca Scott's angelic voice is always clearly heard above all the fuzz, drums and rhythm. Tracks that have to feel old to them, I'm like a stoner barely getting it. And then it hits me how old these songs actually are and how singular they make my personal narrative. I start to remember individual shows that range from long ago to just a few weeks ago. Strange that outside my own mind and perhaps where I choose to listen to music, Serious Radical Girls gets little circulation. I don't listen to much radio outside Public Radio. Perhaps that betrays my limits. I know that they are part of a grander scene, for me they stopped following that scene and began as the creators of just their music long ago. Meaning.....lets not blame them for sounding a certain way after we love them for that same fucking reason.  And lets find new reasons to like their music. I like seeing them as being part of this grander subculture, the other lens tries to see them alone without the baggage. Let the other traits find expression. There are changes that are apparent only to the musicians. I believe they really feel renewed since including Jose on stand up drums, and Cory on bass. So with this newfound capacity to play what they already have, comes new possibilities in writing the music. This next LP will be the first with Cory and Jose from the beginning. And I cannot wait.
Zig