Editor’s Note: This article was updated on 5/30/2023 to reflect corrections made by the band.
Panchiko, LSD and the Search for God and Horse Jumper of Love played a show at the Vermont Hollywood, Los Angeles on May 11. The three came together in support of the May 5 release of Panchiko’s quarter-century-in-the-making debut album, “Failed at Math(s).”
The show was one of two additional tour nights — the other located in New York — added to the trio’s 2023 USA Tour after dates in Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, London and Glasgow sold out in just a week.
However, an immensely entertaining experience provided by important bands had its logistical downs too. Fans who arrived when the gates opened at 8 p.m. entered the venue around an hour later. The line stretched roughly four blocks and took them right into LSD and the Search for God’s set, causing frustration.
When asked by the New University how he became a fan of Panchiko, 18-year-old Max Flores responded, “through social media I would see the [D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L] album cover, and one day I just decided to put it on … It had no skips. Then, when I saw that they were on tour through their Instagram, I was like ‘I wanna go see them.’”
Founding members and guitarists Chris Fifield and Andy Liszt started the night off for LSD and the Search for God by establishing a thick wall of sound rife with textures and bathed in effects. The entrances of drummer Zaied Ali and bassist Daniel Apuzzo then truly kicked the night off, providing meaning to the sound and establishing the beat to “Backwards” — an action met immediately with cheers.
Corresponding with this, the Vermont Hollywood’s three immense screens pivoted from showing the band’s logo to projecting a colored and filtered stream of the band. The projection was reminiscent of 90s music videos from record labels 4AD and Creation Records, whose bands pioneered the sounds of dream pop and shoegaze that LSD and the Search for God have built upon since their formation in 2005.
After roughly 30 seconds, Liszt came in on vocals, with touring vocalist/guitarist Lauren Andino of Tremors and LA Witch joining him soon after. The contrast between the two was striking: the former’s vocals were breathy and rough, while the latter’s were thick and piercing. The textures their timbres provided were more important than the words they relayed — an essential trait of dream pop and shoegaze, as well as a concept propagated by the Cocteau Twins, the band featured on Fifield’s shirt and a signee of 4AD.
With the band continuing to play through song breaks, blending each song into the next, fans were never deprived of the band’s beautiful brand of noise.
After a strong finish that included fan-favorite “Starting Over” from their 2007 eponymous debut EP and an untitled, unreleased track, the sound finally ceased. Empowered by a chorus of cheers, the band broke their stoic countenances and showed their thanks to the crowd as the projections reverted to videos of ducks swimming.
After only 10 or so minutes of intermission and at roughly 10:20 p.m., Horse Jumper of Love took the stage. Cognizant of the crowd’s impatience — concert curfew in Los Angeles is 11:00 p.m. — they quickly got into a set that included both fan favorites and “Heartbreak Rules,” a single from their homonymous album that released May 19.
The contained, yet powerful play of Dimitri Giannopoulos on rhythm guitar, John Margaris on bass, Jamie Vadala-Doran on drums and touring guitarist Tony Tibbets — who played sitting down — fused with Giannopoulos’ angst-ridden vocals to create their renowned brand of pulsating, slow-core-infused indie rock.
Despite an air of quiet intensity mirrored by the instrumentation, Giannopoulos interacted with the crowd often throughout their set, once appealing directly to their appetite for the headliner with, “you guys ready for Panchiko? Me too.”
For their closer, the band played fan-favorite “Ugly Brunette.” After an instrumental introduction, Giannopoulos’ vocals, dripping with malaise, entered the song, continuing to set the mood through enigmatic lyrics such as “[f]uneral expense commercial / Kids cutting birthday cake / I am the jealous one.” His cryptic lyrics could be interpreted to either correlate or contrast with his vocal delivery, with the two working in tandem with the dissonant instrumentation to instill disorientation and uncertainty in the audience.
Despite this, the audience responded confidently with head bangs throughout the song and emphatic cheers when the band finished.
In an interview after the set, Margaris explained to the New University how the three bands ended up on the same bill.
“I think that there’s a crossover where everything is kind of emo-adjacent,” he said.
Margaris then reinforced the fact that Horse Jumper of Love was by far the youngest band to grace the stage despite having about as many projects as Panchiko and LSD and the Search for God combined, saying that “it’s nice to be around some of these older guys that are still playing music… cause I’m getting [there] now.”
After a lengthier intermission and long after the 11:00 p.m. curfew, headliners Panchiko finally hit the stage. They started their set off with “Stuck,” a deeper cut from their 2020 release “Ferric Oxide (Demos 1997-2001).”
From the jump, fans could see a distinct, yet welcome difference between Panchiko’s live and studio sounds, potentially due to the fact that the work the band is known for was recorded around 25 years ago. Lead singer Owain Davies’ live vocals were more powerful and thicker than their breathy studio counterparts and he used this quality to test out vocal techniques unprecedented for him such as high vocal runs on “Sodium Chloride” and vibrato on “Stabilisers For Big Boys.”
Additionally, their instrumentation was more complex live, though Davies maintained a lo-fi, DIY edge through intermittent use of both a separate, higher-gain microphone and a sampler. This step up in production was in no small part due to the contributions of guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Andy Wright, who was the only member of Panchiko to make a career in music during the band’s twenty-year-long hiatus, producing, mixing and mastering for bands such as Swimming.
Filling out the rest of their live sound was original bassist Shaun Ferreday, touring guitarist Rob Harris and touring drummer John Schofield. Wright had met the latter two through his work producing for their band, Tongg. The only founding member of the band absent was John, whose surname was never publicly revealed. Panchiko lost touch with him after he enlisted into the military following their initial disbandment.
This evolution in production capabilities was most explicitly reflected in the band’s new arrangement of “Gwen Everest,” a track initially featured on their demo tape “Ferric Oxide (Demos 1997-2001)” and re-recorded with new parts for “Failed at Math(s).”
The original recording is a self-produced, borderline singer-songwriter track that features only Davies’ vocals and a dissonant acoustic guitar. It doesn’t even feature full lyrics, as Davies abruptly stops singing after about a minute, remarking “Oh, I’ve lost my voice.”
Its lush new arrangement featured the integration of the full band and the addition of both a chorus and a second verse. Driven by textural rhythm play and a catchy lead guitar riff, the song pieced together the original and modern in a way that was quintessentially Panchiko, evoking a positive response from the crowd and proving its place on Panchiko’s new album.
Panchiko then finished their set with the all-star run of “All They Wanted,” “D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L” and “Kicking Cars.” It was remarkable to see the same songs that failed to elicit a single album bid in the band’s heyday being screamed by fans a full generation younger, even more so considering that they sold more albums during the three hours of the concert than the 30 they sold during their initial four years of existence.
Before starting “D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L,” Davies thanked the crowd.
“We never dreamed in our wildest dreams … I don’t know, it definitely wouldn’t have happened. You made it happen by listening to us,” he said.
Before the show, Flores had mirrored this sentiment from a fan’s point of view, saying, “I think it’s pretty cool that they’re being recognized now. It’s nice to see how such good music is found today, how we’re able to listen to it, and see [them] perform, like, right now.”
Though the logistics of the concert were murky, with long waits and uncertainty over start times, the bands’ performances more than compensated for any organizational issues. For just $25, concertgoers were treated to thrilling performances from a band that has become legendary without ever releasing an album, a band of 20-year-old music game veterans and a band of 40-year-old, somewhat paradoxically but not unwarranted, viral sensations.
June Min is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the Spring 2023 quarter. He can be reached at junehm@uci.edu.
