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Panchiko has an interesting back story. As it goes, they formed as a group sometime in the late 90’s and recorded a demo EP in 2000. They were never picked up by a record company, the band broke up and went their separate ways and that was the end of it until 2016 when someone found a copy of the EP in a record store in the UK. This person liked the music and uploaded it and it went viral. No one even knew who the members of the band were until the Internet did what the Internet does and people started hunting for the band. In 2020 they finally found the lead singer via an old Facebook account. The band got back together, released all their recorded music as a compilation album and went on tour in late 2021.
So, what we have here then is a group of forty year old guys from Nottingham singing songs they wrote as teenagers, playing to teenagers who identify with music written 20+ years ago. If it seems a bit hard to believe that five guys were just sitting around waiting to dump their careers and whatnot to rejoin a band they hadn’t thought about for 20 years and go on tour for a couple of years in support of an album they recorded in 2000, then welcome to the inevitable backlash. The whole story seems a bit farfetched and there is a contingent on the Interwebs that believes the whole thing is an elaborate marketing campaign or hoax.
Regardless of whether it is an elaborate prank or not the music is actually pretty good. Sam and I first saw Panchiko last year at Chop Suey in the U-District, where they played a sold out show. I believe the show at The Crocodile we went to Sunday night was the first show of their second tour and it was sold out as well. The Crocodile is about 3x bigger than Chop Suey so it’s interesting to see the band’s popularity continue to grow.
Not that everyone was solely there to see Panchiko. There were two opening bands. We stood in line next to a guy who really had no idea who Panchiko was, he was there for the other two bands.
First up was “LSD and the search for God”. At least the name makes some kind of sense, even if it’s unlikely that LSD will result in finding God. The name fit the band to some extent. They were a kind of trippy shoe gaze rock. I used to think shoe gaze bands are bands that pla melancholy music that is so depressing they can’t even lift their heads up so they just stared at their shoes the whole time. Sam kindly corrected me and I now know it’s called shoe gaze because the band spends most of the time on the floor fiddling with their guitar pedals trying to get distortion, feedback and whatnot out of their instruments.
The second band was “Horse Jumper of Love”. I think this is what happens when you let a random name generator pick your band name. We also get to experience another subgenre of indie rock called slowcore, which effectively is what I thought shoe gaze was originally. Bleak lyrics, slower tempo and more minimalist melodies. Sam and I agreed that’s not the music for us. Call it what you want, we just called it boring.
It does bring up an interesting point though. When I was telling Karen about the show she asked if anyone had booed the opener acts. I suppose it’s a good question. I had never thought about it. Why would anyone boo? Everyone has different tastes and the beauty of going to a show is that there is something for everyone and you are free to pick and choose what you listen to. Sam and I might not have cared for the music but there were plenty of people there who came specifically to see that band. So, no, no one booed. There were plenty of people who cheered. I just tried to keep my eyes open and stay awake.
