P:ANO – Brigadoon

(CD, Acuarela)

If the Mekons hadn’t decided to split up and pursue careers in electrified and insurgent country music, but rather to lay back and delve their punk spirit a little more into folkloristic venues and balladry of the 1920 to 1940, then something like P:ANO might have followed. Or maybe not, who knows. It was just that next to the shared vocals between male and female, also the brightly shining originality and creativity abounding on “brigadoon” reminded me of some of the stuff I liked a lot by The Mekons. There is also the inability to restrain themselves when choices are lout, obviously, since this album hosts over twenty songs, but enough restraint to keep songs to their basic ideas and show off in various directions. This goes as far as an a capella song (“The Cameroon”), a faked waltz (“He will come beck to me” – that spelling error is right there on the sleeve and lyricsheet, so it is on purpose!) and to a wonderful departing song at the end of the record (“The true light”). But there is also the inability to write a bad songs, because some on here are less well shaped than others, but none of them is really bad. Just like the Mekons used to have on their double albums. P:ANO has way less electric guitars, though. Enough of the old English band that migrated to the USA. But this one here already has the continent right: they are from Vancouver, Canada.

“Brigadoon” sits nicely inside the tiny wave of folkloristically touched bands from the USA that instead of doing alt.country prefer to play marching songs from the frontier times and prefer history books to John Wayne movies. Yes, I am talking about The Decemberists. P:ANO is less theatrically or dramatically as you won’t find a narrative like “The Mariner’s Song” on here, but there are a lot more stories hidden in their shorter songs as well. The impression is definitely strong during the first parts of the record, but starts to fade the further you get in and their style drifts away from that of The Decemberists. Especially the starting song (“Covered Wagons”) with its booming drums and horn section and that energetic singing, even in semi-choir, is superb large scale indie-music.

They also miss the violence and blooddrenched historicism of Faulkner, but nevertheless, there are some great, funny and touching stories hidden on here. The real issues of the lyrics are sometimes hard to grasp, but they tend to circle around static moments in life, when the storm has blown over is yet to come. That means moments, when you suddenly find yourself looking around, focusing on small things and details, wondering what they all mean. And there is a definite loneliness and air of seclusion around almost all of the songs.

The best thing about “Brigadoon” is that right through its length and two dozen songs, it never gets boring, and that is a lot to say about a record nowadays, innit? That starts with the small things, like the way they are able to let a song fade or rather drift into off into nothingness, or how they pull off schematic songwriting that is not dull or plain unlistenable, but cool and touching or use that Eighties echo on drums and synthies from the same era on “The Rescuer”, to give the impression of Midge Ure, a small-size Simple Minds or Ultravox. Fortunately, these are some parts of the music of the Eighties, that I like. Could have been worse, right? Moreover, if magically fits into the overall context and impression of the album (and is something The Decemberists would never ever dare to do) which also includes stabs at the Beach Boys and on early Vaudeville music.

“Brigadoon” is P:ANO’s third album, and the fourth one is already out since last month. So much for my journalistic intentions of keeping up to date – I still have none whatsoever. But when the arrangement suddenly spreads out widely during the refrain of “You the widow” only to get back to hammer-piano and harmonica for the next verse, I know that it is definitely right thing to do. If you wondered, this record was licensed from Mint Records - who are also host to Neko Case, The New Pornographers and the Hanson Brothers, which might give you some sight on the direction(s) this one here goes.