Panther Car - Progressive Rock - Bozeman, MT
by Jordan Finn
After nine long years, Panther Car’s first album, Pomegranate, is finally here. Hailing from Montana’s Bozeman music scene, the rock quartet has taken the best elements from indie, garage, and psychedelia and whipped up a batch of groovy rockers and moody dance-hits just in time for the new decade. The drumming is tight, the vocals dialed in, and (Scout’s honor!) the production the best I’ve heard on a Montana record. Panther Car isn’t afraid to complicate things by leaping into surprise rhythms and sudden key changes, which showcases just how confident and novel the group really is. The palpable trust and alchemy between the members is translated on all ten tracks, once again thrusting Panther Car forward as one of the preeminent rock groups in modern Montana music.
Pomegranate is brought to us by four Bozeman stalwarts: guitarist and frontman Scott Merenez, guitarist Connor Smith, bassist Andrew Cornell and drummer Chris Kirkwood. These musicians play tight but loose and meld their individual sounds effortlessly - which is essential for their ambitious song structures and startling transitions. With bass, drums, percussion, vocals, and multiple guitars, the mix does an excellent job giving each member their much deserved due.
Right out the gate, opener “Lull” suggests the two sides of Panther Car’s sound: melody and surprise. “Lull” opens by teasing a potential verse that immediately shifts into an unsettling rhythm. It provokes more than it invites. But after proceeding past this first gatekeeper, the remainder of the track satisfies with climbing harmonies and the verve of dedicated slackers. These sometimes jerky transitions are strung together by a daisy-chain of earworms like in “Behave” when the listener is taken on a roller-coaster ride of countless motifs and sudden time signatures. This track in particular nearly enters prog-rock territory by virtue of its more than half dozen musical sections - all in five minutes! “Rainbows” accompanies “Lull” as the album’s second single, another album highlight that instantly sounds ready for indie airplay. It soothes in a dreamy but dancy reverie before rocking out the finale with tasteful stops and an air of mystery. It feels as colorful and psychedelic as the name suggests with plenty of effects and layered instrumentation to give the track its immersive atmosphere. These two singles give the record its strong start before delving into more complex - and occasionally challenging - musicianship.
The tracks are awash in reverb and choruses that maintain Pomegranate’s general mood. It feels murky but with the benefit of a defined backbeat to ballast anyone who might get lost in those textured soundscapes. A jam band this is not. The shifts weave in various moods, tempos, and time signatures, keeping the songs interesting and neither too euphonious or off-putting. The multiplicity of parts makes it difficult to give any one song a definitive mood sometimes, which depending on intentions, can add or take away from the experience. In many ways, the entire album feels like dozens of parts. While some tracks are supplied with growling amps and cacophonous drumming (“Nonpareil” and “The Way”) others go for the harmonious and danceable (“Ladders” and “Cool Lies”). What’s so impressive about the record is just how much is really going on with each song, not only the number of parts, but how motifs overlap, recur, conflict. A fantastic guitar lick will sit with you - then rush out the door without a trace, begging to be replayed.
Pomegranate’s general mood feels murky and layered with a defined backbeat to ballast anyone who might get lost in those textured soundscapes. Vocals are self-assured and never bite off more than they can chew. Merenez alternates between soft falsettos that bemoan and declarative shouts that announce, either method always fitting perfectly with the rest of the bands humming guitars and grooves. The guitars on “The Way” rattle and rumble and the chorus pedals on “Behave” ring true. One example of these fleeting but unforgettable sounds is on “Behave” where a five-second homage to a Beach Boys keyboard is replicated on a uncanny guitar part that alludes to those same surfy sounds fifty years ago. Rhythmically, the drumming rarely plays a typically rock beat, even shifting patterns in the middle of a chorus. A lesser drummer wouldn’t be able to pull this off so confidently, but Kirkwood dances around the idea of a standard rock rhythm, all without seeming gratuitous or indulgent. The only challenge is being able to keep up with each transition.
One of my few complaints however, is how a few songs overstay their welcome. “Cool Lies” for example, opens with an interesting verse and jerks into a great pre-chorus but the chorus repeats so many times that by minute four it feels a bit monotonous. But that’s forgetting that the wonderful vocal delivery and rocked-out outro ties the song together at the end. Usually, the length of some songs is justified especially when Panther Car throws in a sick finale like in “The Way” and the bittersweet finale at the end of Pomegranate’s last track “Thought Up”. Both are album highlights and it’s important to state that no one song on the album feels weak or rushed.
The title of the record could refer to several things: the fruit of the dead in ancient Greece, the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, or perhaps the messy satisfaction that comes with getting under its skin. Any way you shake it, Pomegranate satiates the hunger for fantastic regional indie/psych. And like the inside of a pomegranate, the album is full of individual seeds of goodness buried within the labyrinthine innards of the records. Crack it open and enjoy.
