Dig ‘in: Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, Ultra Lights, Smirk
Check out what the No Wristbands team is listening to and what’s in our show calendars this month on our latest Dig ‘in.
INCOMING
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - A ? of WHEN (Domino Recording Co. LP)
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about artists who make a deliberate choice to step outside the streaming ecosystem—WU LYF did it with A Wave That Will Never Break, and now here come Noah Lennox and Pete Kember doing something similar with A ? of WHEN, their second collaborative album as Panda Bear & Sonic Boom. No Spotify, no videos, vinyl and download only. Their statement about it—“more rock n’ roll than flick & scroll”—is the kind of thing that could easily read as a gimmick, but when you actually hear the record, it makes complete sense. This is music that wants your full attention, and it earns it.
Reset, their first collaboration from 2022, was built around obscure 1950’s pop samples and felt like two people discovering what they sounded like together—warm and playful but a little tentative. A ? of WHEN has no such tentativeness. This is a band that knows exactly what it’s doing. Sonic Boom replaced the vintage samples with loops built from what he calls “misfit instruments”—a steel drum, a harp (taped from Mary Lattimore improvising during a soundcheck on the Reset tour), yodeling he fell in love with on a trip to Basel. The results are genuinely strange and genuinely beautiful, often at the same time.
The record opens with “Never Givin’ In,” and it sets the tone perfectly. It’s shimmering and slightly disorienting—Lennox’s harmonies stacked over a bed of rainbow fuzz, the whole thing feeling like it’s refracting light in multiple directions at once. When they sing about being taken “into another vision of the future,” you believe them. It doesn’t sound like nostalgia and it doesn’t sound like futurism—it sounds like something outside of time entirely, which is exactly what you want from these two.
“Lucky Charm” goes deep into the bizarre, with steel drum and what sounds like a mariachi band somehow occupying the same space as Panda Bear’s Beach Boys harmonies, and yet nothing feels out of place. That’s the trick these two keep pulling—taking a handful of completely unlikely ingredients and arranging them in a way that sounds inevitable.
The title track is where the record’s themes land most directly. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when”—sung over something that sounds almost cheerful on the surface—is a song about reckoning, about the accumulated weight of things we’ve collectively ignored catching up with us. Lennox has said he wanted the song to feel hopeful rather than despairing, and it does, just barely. The tension between the buoyancy of the music and the gravity of what’s being said is what makes it work.
What I love most about A ? of WHEN is that it feels like two artists at a genuine creative peak making exactly the record they want to make, on their own terms. For Noah Lennox especially—coming off last year’s excellent Sinister Grift—this is a remarkable run of form. Some artists slow down in their fifties. These two are just getting sharper. -Mark Joyner
Ultra Lights - Pleasure’s All Yours (Chunklet Industries LP)
John Robinson is calling bullshit on a world driven by manufactured existence. In naming his band after the tobacco industry’s marketing ploy to position a lower tar and nicotine cigarette as a safe alternative, he’s clearly not suffering any fools.
On Ultra Lights’ debut LP, Pleasure’s All Yours, the Atlanta quartet come across like a bar band that blithely ignore last call warnings to press on until the plug gets pulled. They never overstay their welcome though, as the record’s eleven taut tracks crackle with vitality.
“I’m casting a big shadow / This world will swallow me up / I’m searching for distraction / But nothing is ever good enough,” Robinson reveals on “Good Enough.” His response is to blow it all up (“Just light it by the fuse and scatter) rather than trying to fix something that’s beyond repair. “Diamond Dreams” reinforces that sentiment by noting that chasing the unobtainable only leads to being lead down “another black hole.”
Robinson’s delivery on the album’s title track is drawn from Stephen Malkmus’ playbook—an acerbic dig encased in a catchy melody. The record comes to a close with the defiant “Got Damage.” Dragged down by a toxic relationship, Robinson is tired of getting an earful of bad advice and makes a vow to get out before the situation gets him for good. There’s an acknowledgement that you can’t outrun your problems, but you just might be able to escape to live another day. -Bruce Novak
Smirk - Speculative Fiction (Smoking Room LP)
“Like an animal going off to die / I leave something else behind,” comes the confession from Nick Vicario on Speculative Fiction’s pivotal track, “Going off to Die.” Before Vicario departed LA where his largely solo endeavor Smirk began for a more stable family life in Connecticut, that finality was a distinct possibility.
With a disarmingly candid raw honesty that brings to mind tortured souls like Ian Curtis and Peter Laughner, Vicario reckons with a reckless past while attempting to navigate a saner future. The lulling embrace of “Sistine Junk” draws us into the throes of addiction. On “Victimry” he owns up to his self-sabotage and the truth seems to set him free like the song’s second half that leaves the angst behind for a gentler guitar outro.
The album’s lengthiest track, “Abide,” feels like its most redemptive—offering a plea of patience and a second chance to right the wrongs. Speculative Fiction chronicles Vicario’s quest to rewrite the narrative, creating a new reality that offers him a comfortable distance from a wayward past. -Bruce Novak
UPCOMING
Orchid Club at The Burlington - August 1, 8:00 PM
Minneapolis trio Orchid Club strike a good balance between angularity and melodicism. Their playing, while spirited, is also economic—devoid of extraneous notes. Their 2024 self-titled debut EP retained a frenzied post-punk energy that fed into their more expansive album, Three Alarm Fire, that arrived last year. Guitarist Blaine Bauman and bassist Noah Feldman alternate on vocals; ranging from the shouted warnings of “Tectonic Plates” to laid back slacker tones of “Kick Geneva.” Orchid Club surpass the garden variety indie rock that’s commonplace nowadays and displays great promise in the pursuit of greener pastures. -Bruce Novak
Daundry at Empty Bottle - August 9, 9:00 PM
Over the past month, Daundry released “Djork,” the first of three singles leading up to their planned second album following 2024’s Pria. Its shifting soft/loud dynamics heralds a promising direction for the Chicago-based band that had been leaning more metallic since initially emerging with a more understated presence in 2022. Ian Kloehn’s gentle strumming kicks off the track, soon to be joined by Katrina Hildebrandt’s rubbery bass groove and Sebastian Jones’ snare and cymbal strikes. Kloehn inserts brief jolts of electric guitar shocks to jumpstart the song, which then proceeds down a path of alternating tension and release. It’s the sort of sneak preview that builds excitement for what may follow without lessening the range of possibilities. I’m guessing their upcoming set at the Bottle will provide some added elucidation in regards to that. -Bruce Novak
Starcharm at Gman Tavern - August 15, 8:30 PM
Once drummer Travis Newgren exited Soft and Dumb, an outfit that began in Champaign-Urbana, guitarist/songwriter Elena “Lanie” Buenrostro was in search new playing partners. After coming across Amaya Peña at show at Scubas Tavern, they convinced Peña, who had previously been playing guitar, to take up drumming. Peña would then bring their friend Jasmin Feliciano into the fold to round out the trio on bass.
Starcharm’s songs are more supercharged than Soft and Dumb’s material by nature of the expanded line-up and an enhanced melodic sensibility makes its way to the forefront. Buenrostro’s missives navigate a middle ground between the pop influences of Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison and the guitar shredding of Bully’s Alicia Bognanno. With three promising digital tracks under their belt, the band is progressing towards an EP release with Fire Talk affiliate Angel Tapes. Coming off a recent appearance at the Square Roots Festival, the Gman performance will be a solo outing for Buenrostro. -Bruce Novak
UNCOVERED
Wipers - Over The Edge (Brain Eater LP)
With all the acclaim lavished on the Pacific Northwest’s grunge scene, it’s easy to overlook the table-setting presence of Portland, Oregon’s Wipers a decade earlier. Kurt Cobain certainly understood their significance in listing 3 of the band’s albums among his all-time top 50 records. When he was growing up in Missoula, Montana, Steve Albini made a lengthy road trip just to see them play and he included their track “Romeo” on a “20 Songs” list that originated from a Twitter prompt in 2023.
With a scant desire for touring, Greg Sage focused his energies on self-recording, becoming a DIY artist in its truest form. The title track that opens the Wipers’ third album that was released in 1983 comes on like a reinterpretation of Rocket From The Tombs’ “Sonic Reducer”—an outcast anthem from a protagonist who’s been pushed too far. “Doom Town,” which follows, doesn’t get any rosier with Sage’s spiraling guitar pulling the listener down with him to the depths of despair.
As the album’s shortest track, clocking in under two minutes, “Messenger” appears as a brief poppy respite, but not so much when we find out that the title character is the bearer of more bad news. The aforementioned “Romeo” rips the bandage completely off—a Link Wray meets Suicide banger that has Romeo roaming the streets in vain for his mythical Juliet.
Over The Edge became the Wipers’ first record to garner meaningful alternative radio airplay, prompting a later reissue from Restless Records. It even led the road-wary Sage to embark on an extended tour, but the subsequent bankruptcy of Park Avenue Records that he had a stake in waylaid much of the band’s future momentum. More records would eventually follow (both with the band and solo) with 1999’s The Power In One becoming the last studio album, all of which offer something of substance. -Bruce Novak
We recommend listening along over at our Spotify page. Here’s this week’s content: