Pardoner "Peace Loving People"
From Paste Magazine:
“Organized around skew-whiff pop hooks and hardcore-punk dynamism, Peace Loving People is a stream of Gen Z consciousness. It’s a therapy session in which many stones are overturned: relationships (romantic and canine); ambition and failure; drugs, lots and lots of drugs; the Second Amendment; big cities and small paychecks; the ever-shifting alternative landscape; the end of the world as we know it; whether we’ll be fine. Each topic is given equal attention and rubs up against the rest, just as in real life—just as in your Twitter feed.
Some of these subjects are tackled with the sardonic wit that characterized Came Down Different, such as when Freeland (co-guitarist/vocals) snarls, “You gotta change with the times / What else can you do? / Nice belief system, man / Did your mommy make it for you?” But others require a kind of melancholy reflection, an earnestness that we haven’t seen the group offer to this degree: “I got so much left to lose / Seems like I never learn a lesson / Unless the lesson leaves a bruise,” he sings on the crisp, poppy standout “Dreaming’s Free.” Striking a similar tone, “Rosemary’s Gone” may well be Breakup Song Of The Year, molding gnarled guitars and diaristic candor into an alluring, Wowee Zowee-esque puddle of pain (just like love..?).
Behind the pithy insights is pithy guitar music. Pardoner’s sound lives in the same world as peer bands Dumb, Dazy, 2nd Grade and Cheekface—those postmodern indie rockers whose love for acts like Lilys and Polvo lingers in their music in the way one’s accent reveals their origin but not their whole story. In other words, Peace Loving People is more than an amalgam of influences. Of course it is. Pardoner have been doing this a while now, and their confidence comes across in these more ambitious arrangements. Fast, loud and even obnoxious one minute; heartfelt and reposed the next.”