Panther
(Kill Rock Stars)
In physics Entropy measures disintegration and disorder, the continual process of things falling apart. That's a fitting name for Panther's latest work, where pop forms are unceasingly put together, pulled apart and reassembled. Here rhythms, melodies and harmonies rub together in a humming friction of point, counterpoint and chaos.
Panther started out as Charlie Salas-Humara's one-man electro-pop band, a project he began after The Planet The folded in 2005. The outfit became a duo when drummer Joe Kelly (from 31 Knots) joined for 14 Kt God. Entropy is the third Panther album, and the second with Kelly, full of complicated pop songs, chopped into irregular bits and rearranged at random. With two players, Panther can now take a more organic sound than on the earlier albums, using live drums, guitar, bass and piano in addition to synths and samples. That combination -- of live and robot sounds, of melody and stuttery blitz, of old-school piano runs and fractured post-punk beats - is the engine that drives these tunes, sometimes right off the edge of the table.
All these songs are grounded thoroughly in four-four - held down hard by the thump of drums, the banging of piano chords - yet they are so full of irregular phrases and stop-starts as to seem free of time signature. A jittery energy percolates through the whole of Entropy, a sugar-rush sense of fun that is manic without being the least bit anxious, multifaceted without being schizophrenic.
What separates Entropy from the typical fritzed-out, chop-and-dice pop album (see Kelly's old outfit, 31 Knots, Menomena and others) is, perhaps, the melodic quality of the vocals, the almost prog-like complexity of these multi-part songs. "Love Is Sold," the single, starts with a hard, earnest beat, a splatter of piano chords, a spoke-sung cadence of words. Yet very soon, it is taken up into a flurry of ornate vocal counterpoints, a Yes-like complexity filtering into its bracing punk energy. "Oh Doctor" alternates between spiky rhythms and soaring, slo-mo choruses, like a radio switching between Fugazi and Sugar. There's a heedless physical energy to these songs, a surface-y fascination with the way things sound, rather than what they mean. "Séance" plays with the way that two words - "Séance" and "Patience" - have a similar sound.
Three remixes close the album, two of them emphasizing the glitchy electro-pop from which Panther comes, a middle one of "Love Is Sold" (credited to Lips and Ribs) adding even more organic sounds to the mix. Here jungle-y top beats and squealing organ trills push Panther's slice-and-dice pop into pure jam. But in a way, the remixes are just another iteration of Salas-Humara's process, which disassembles songs into chaotic bits, then rolls them around in a box and stops when they an intriguing pattern.
Consumer note: Entropy is available from Kill Rock Stars as a limited edition (500 copies) LP that includes a download of the album plus eight digital bonus tracks.
Standout tracks: "Love Is Sold," "Birds that Move," "Séance" JENNIFER KELLY
