together PANGEA Acoustic Performance – Fingerprints Records – January 22, 2014

together PANGEA Acoustic Performance
Fingerprints Records
1/22/14

With a name change and a fancy major label, together PANGEA is gearing up for a successful launch into mainstream music culture. Critics such as Rolling Stone, Yahoo! Music, Stereogum, and Brooklyn Vegan, together PANGEA have been creating huge buzz that normally doesn't come to a band on their third record release. Alongside Fidlar and The Garden, these Burger Records based bands are jumping onto bigger and bigger music blogs almost reaching the popularity of an earlier version of the Southern California garage-rock band Wavves. Normally loud, obnoxious, and intoxicated together PANGEA (and their audience) are known for incredibly rowdy sets. However, last night at Fingerprints was a totally different story.

“This is like storytellers,” bassist Danny Bengston said after the band played a song from their latest record Badillac. Lately, the band is trying to differentiate themselves from the stagnating Burger Records scene. With lo-fi record after lo-fi record being put onto cassette, the band has been taking their music to a more high fidelity jumping onto promotional projects like Redbull's profile and premier of the original recording on their new album's title track.

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Recently putting out their last two records on the label Harvest that is owned by Capitol records, the band joined a line-up of releases including, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Wire's Pink Flag but more recently Death Grip's No Love Deep Web and Morrissey's upcoming release. Joining a major label in the past might have turned fans off from a band's latest release, but excluding one fan who repeatedly asked to hear “To Drunk to Come,” the audience was really into the bands new songs.

Mixing in a few older songs including “River” off their Killer Dreams EP and “Living Dummy” the title track of their last record, the band had a varied set list for an in-store acoustic show hyping there new record. When most fans would have thought the band would be playing acoustic versions of only their newest songs, however the band dug deep into their catalogue at points. The audience never getting more into the songs than a few head bobs seemed to be enjoying the tracks, but nothing like their regular sets full of beer can holding mosh pits where the floor is puddling with spilt beer sweat. The calm demeanor seemed to intimidate the group until they got to the point where Bengston said, “this is hard, a lot harder than playing loud.”
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Not only did together PANGEA transform their songs for the show, but they revealed the core of their songwriting. What is assumed to be flaccid, meaningless drunk music was conveyed a lot more clearly through the acoustic performance. Although the set was great it was short lived. The band blew through it and in about 20 minutes the whole thing was over.

Critical Bias : I'm getting really sick of Buger Records bands all sounding the same.

Crowd : A small group of Burger kids and random record store customers.

together PANGEA is playing the Observatory Constellation Room this friday Jan. 24th. get tickets here.

See also
10 Punk Albums to Listen to Before You Die
25 Greatest OC Bands of All Time: The Complete List
20 Greatest OC Albums of All Time: The Complete List

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