Back in 2017, San Francisco outfit Pardoner released Uncontrollable Salvation on Father/Daughter Records, a record which established their distinctive nineties-inflected sound, where slacker rock attitude meets shoegaze weight. The band was the first time Max Freeland and Trey Flanigan had picked up guitars, but nothing about their first proper full-length gave that fact away. Backed by River van den Berghe (drums) and Will Mervau (bass), the twin guitars snaked through the heft and reverb, riding great fuzzy waves and drawing complicated lines through an otherwise chaotic sound. Add in Freeland’s caustically dry delivery, and the Pardoner lift themselves above many in the genre, refusing to fall back on pure walls of noise.
After several releases in the intervening years, including 2019’s Playin’ On a Cloud, Pardoner are back with a brand new record, Came Down Different. This time to be released via Bar/None Records., the album digs further into the Pardoner aesthetic, adding an angular menace that juxtaposes with the slacker vibes and sardonic delivery to create a distinctively deadpan style.
First single ‘Donna Says’ provides the first glimpse at the approach. Opening with cloudy distortion and a foreboding clamour of noise, the song kicks into an almost sunny rhythm. But beneath the surface lurks something darker and heavier. Freeland’s lyrics are as barbed as ever too, but set against everything else they don’t come off as critical so much as fatalistic. Pardoner conjure the world we live in—often strange, always infuriating, yet crushingly banal too. What option is there but a kind of ironic surrender?
Am I falling out of favor?
Am I maybe not your flavor? Pour my heart onto the table
Trade it in for cash
Because I want the money
Oh yeah I want it bad
The song comes complete with a video directed by Katayoon Yousefbigloo, which really excavates the moods and themes of the track and maintains the 90s aesthetic too.
Came Down Different is out via Bar/None Records on the 14th May and you can pre-order it now from the Pardoner Bandcamp page.
