DIARY OF A PANDAMAN – NOVEMBER 2024
The Pandaman had one job, one task, one moving target to hit in 2024 – to go see 365 live acts play in one calendar year. In 2022 he failed hopelessly. In 2023 he failed slightly less hopelessly, but failed nonetheless. Last time out, as we crawled from the wreckage of October, we were poised on the cusp of the edge of the precipice of heroic success, having seen 364 live sets in ‘24. There were two whole months of the year left to check out one small, wafer-thin band. What could possibly go wrong?
Truth be told, not very much. That 365th Pandaman performance duly comes at the start of November at Norwich Arts Centre in the company of MERCURY REV. A timely choice, too – we have very fond memories of the Rev’s first shambolically cosmic UK shows at the start of the 1990s. What is pretty amazing is that they should still be floating around in 2024 – by the end of the previous century they already appeared to be a busted flush, or as friend and fellow sonic voyager Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips once said, “Their audience had gone away and all they could do was make the music that was in their dreams.”
The end-of-the-century twist was this: while The Lips were making the career-defining ‘The Soft Bulletin’ album Mercury Rev were in the same studio in update New York creating ‘The Deserter’s Songs’, a seismic last throw of the dice which – somewhat improbably – ended up refining their own career. The audience came back, enticed by some of the most fragrant melodic dreamscapes captured on tape. In fact, the Rev’ve found a whole new modern crowd as epic live staple ‘Holes’ now soundtracks Cancer Research sadverts on ITV3. This somehow seems entirely appropriate, as singer Jonathan Donahue is in full-on steampunk Mad Hatter mode, orchestrating the gentle chaos building and swelling around him. The early shambolicness may now subsumed by an ageing prog-laced grace, but ‘Holes’ and ‘Goddess On A Hiway’ hark back to a victory hauled from lost hope.
The next question is this: having achieved gigging victory would the Pandaman happily retire from the toilet circuit, delighted to never set ears on another band for another twelve months? Or would he end up flying to Gothenburg for the Viva Sounds Festival and gorge himself on four nights of utterly febrile new turns from across the musical universe? Small clue: what, we wonder, is Swedish for Elastica?
Before we can answer that, another report on another night out in Norwich, this time at Voodoo Daddy’s in the company of WH LUNG. Proof positive you never even know everything going on right in front of your very ears, the Manchester five piece are three albums into a career which has passed the Pandaman by. This would seem to be a frankly terrible oversight (or sound) on our part, as the fivepiece are excellent.
They are also a thrusting mystery machine of melody and maverickness, with icy synths, relentless rhythms and shrapnels of post-punk guitar. So there is modern vigour and vim a’plenty, but with bursts of choral splendour and a sound that builds like such a juggernaut onstage one fears that if they stopped their songs too abruptly they would be hurled headfirst into the crowd like rash crash test dummies. Throw in the towering energetic force of frontman Joe and you have yourself some kind of collision between New Order, Vlure and The Walkmen, perhaps. Frankly, there’s a glorious desperation here, urges in the motorik surges. Pretty glad we didn’t stop at 365.
What next? Oh yeah. Elastica, Sweden, Viva Sounds Festival. Cue a casually laidback clusterlunge of panels and musicians and gently maddened conversations and live performances in uptown Gothenburg. It’s chilly, but chilled; an intimate and intensely matey four day blast of meetings and meaty music. It’s also very, very Swedish. Some of the bands sing in Swedish and introduce those Swedish songs in Swedish. It really is quite discombobulating.
One local sweet-hearted dreampop singer, RONIA, boldly attempts to welcome all the punters from the UK and the USA. Only at the end of her set does someone gently point out her welcome was also delivered entirely in Swedish, at which point she scurries around the the Hangmattan venue individually apologising to any English speakers she can find in the crowd.
Lucky for the perplexed Pandaman that music is such a international language then: back over at the Hangmattan venue, NEKTAR are the none-more-local hopefuls playing their indie rock trade. None-more-youthful they are as well, their two guitarists barely 17 years old if they’re a day out of short pants. Yet they play like seasoned veterans, cultivating a vivacious alt.rock sound and pouring art and soul into their forty cultured but impressively feverish minutes. ‘Sitt Ner (Lilla Jag)’, as they say in these parts.
Down the slope at Fyrens Olkafe, Stockholm quartet CLUTTER are clattering away in a fine, gently furious sort of way. “Dirty but melodic indie rock with great weight and push” promises the festival blurb, the two girl singers not so much bouncing off eachother as slouching around exuding all kinds of intensely tuneful trauma. What’s Swedish for Elastica again?
Around these parts nobody needs to translate the words ‘Cold’ and ‘play’. Which is handy because, back down the Fyrens Olkafe slope, MAJVI SUPERSTAR are bringing some calm to the eye of the Viva Sounds sonic storm. More accurately, one Sofia Kristensen is causing genteel sonic consternation with guitar and piano and the most bountiful of voices. If her stage name carries a coy reference to The Carpenters then that’s handy too, as Sofia carries herself with a knowing grace and elegance from a time long gone. Throw in a couple of tunes Benny and Bjorn would have killed eachother to write in 1978 and Majvi Superstar really is the star of the show. Abbasolutely fabulous, of course.
There are pockets of international intrigue elsewhere: Canadians, Danes, Belgians and Latvians have travelled fur and wide to be here. Over at the 2Lang This Feeling night Radio X man John Kennedy makes the crowd feel at home by reading out the Premier League results before DYLAN ROBERTS delivers a fizzingly chipper acoustic set and the likes of The Lilacs and Good Health Good Wealth bring a bit of cheek and chutzpah to a venue situated – quite correctly – next door to the Kings Head Britpop pub.
Back at the Hangmattan meanwhile, Americans MARY SHELLEY are causing monstrous chaos: last diarised by a frankly hungover Pandaman at Valhalla at SXSW back in the spring, back then their hospital gown-clad indie antics merely soundtracked the hairy dog afternoon interlude. This time around it’s an entirely different sonic story as the Brooklyn foursome storm Viva Sounds with a wildly propulsive smorgasbord of styles and influences. They’re dense, but danceable; intense, but light on their feet; swapping instruments, but never missing an upbeat beat. “Ricocheting in range from IDLES to Talking Heads”? Couldn’t have put it more succinctly ourselves.
One last fine Gothenburger pavement conversation to end this diarised intermission, this time with the guitarist from Majvi Superstar. He is the proud owner of one of the most battered Telecasters we’ve ever seen being played live. “Looks like that guitar’s been right through the rock’n’roll mill,” say we. “Oh, I bought it off some bloke from The Hives,” shrugs our latest Swedish pal.
Friends forever, or a weekend, at least.
PANDAMAN’S 2024 PERFORMANCE TOTAL: 398
