P:ano
Brigadoon
By Kevin Hainey

These innocently amateurish Vancouver youngsters, led by 22-year-old songwriter Nick Krgovich, have pulled out all the indie pop stops on their third album, Brigadoon, which positively bursts with joy and candour over the course of its 22-song creative whirlwind. Incorporating the foursome’s varied pop sensibilities, P:ano unabashedly hold their open-hearted sincerity out for all to see and traipse through a plethora of different sounds with a youthful sense of exuberance and curiosity. They manage to unite the ’80s new romantic synth wash (“The Rescuer”), Casio-pop heart-pulling (“Heavens”) and the mini-rock-opera (“Storm the Gates”), giving an outstanding example of three drastically different songs being effectively sequenced together. More stage production-infused fair features on “The Snow” and “You the Widow” (the two songs that follow them) and the band’s familiar indie-pop tenderness is beautifully displayed on “Supermarket One,” “Dark Hills,” and “Leave Me with the Boy.” Overall, P:ano have pulled back the grandiosity they demonstrated on their lavish last album, The Den (which featured a 20-plus member ensemble of players), to get down to primitive basics between their four members. The results are often wildly impressive as P:ano prove to possess wonderfully inherent pop craft, but be warned: a handful of these songs drown in their own overbearing ambition.

What were some of the inspirations for Brigadoon? Singer/guitarist/pianist Nick Krgovich: At this point one of the things we’re interested in exploring is something that kind of sounds antiquated and old, even though it’s coming from the present.

What is it that interests you in eras of the past? I think it’s more just trying to figure out what makes a song — because we’re essentially just writing pop music — so what makes something that has the quality that can kind of not date itself. So, not saying that we’ve accomplished that, but it’s just something that we’re trying. By listening to lots of the great American pop songwriters, like Irving Berlin or Rodgers and Hart, where the songs lyrically can be really wry and funny, and they were hilarious to the ears in the ’40s but if you listen to them now they’re still really inventive. Those songs are infallible in a way, so it was kind of a meagre, honest attempt at trying to create something like that with the resources we had. I think in some ways that might be the ultimate goal: to try to create music that’s not just going to blow over as the years go on. (Mint)

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Aimee Mann - The Forgotten Arm
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Architecture In Helsinki - In Case We Die
A-Sides - Hello, Hello
Barbie Bankok - Oh My God
Bardo Pond - Cypher Documents I
Ben Lee - Awake is the New Sleep
Black Lipstick - Sincerely, Black Lipstick
Blue Van - The Art of Rolling
Brahman - A Forlorn Hope
The Bravery - The Bravery
Burning Airlines - Identikit
Cape May - Central City May Rise Again
Cardinal Effect - Red Light Carousel
Diary of Dreams - MenschFeind
Dinosaur Jr. - Dinosaur/You’re Living All Over Me/Bug
Dip Leg - The Sympathy without Love
Dismemberment Plan - Emergency and I
Edie Sedgwick - Her Love is Real…But She is Not
Electric Frankenstein - Super Kool
Eric Matthews - Six Kinds of Passion Looking for an Exit
Extra Extra! - We’re Not That Stupid
Fifty Four Square Foot Trampoline - That Simple
French Toast - In a Cave
Gratitude - Gratitude
Gruff Rhys - Yr Atal Genhedlaeth
Guess Who - Let’s Go
Heartless Bastards - Stairs and Elevators
Horrorpops - Hell Yeah!
James McKenty & the Spades - Burning On Fumes
Jens Lekman - The Opposite of Hallelujah
John Wetton - Agenda/Amata
Katray - Burn It!
Killingflaw - Politician
Les Mod’s - Bang Sister Bang
Libertines - Boys in the Band/What Became of the Likely Lads
Longwave - There’s a Fire
Love As Laughter - Laughter’s Fifth
M’s - The M’s
Mando Diao - Hurricane Bar
Mardo - Mardo
Martha Wainwright - Martha Wainwright
Mary Timony - Ex Hex
Matthew Skoller Band - These Kind of Blues!
Men in Fur - Men in Fur
Metropolitan - The Lines They Get Broken
Millencolin - Kingwood
Music A.M. - My City Glittered Like a Breaking Wave
Nagisa Ni Te - Dream Sounds
Neckers - The Neckers
Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
P:ano - Brigadoon
Pennywise - Unknown Road
Perishers - Let There Be Morning
Pilot Scott Tracy - Any City
Pink Razors - Scene Suicide
Pitch Black - This Is the Modern Sound
Plain White T’s - All That We Needed
Recoilers - 2 Years End
Reel Big Fish - We’re Not Happy ‘Til You’re Not Happy
Regina Spektor - Soviet Kitsch
Rheostatics - The Whale Music Concert, 1992
Righteous Jams - Rage of Discipline
Rocket Summer - Hello, Good Friend
Run Away From the Humans - We Exist
Satelliters - Hashish
Second - Awake for an Hour
Signal Hill Transmission - Tomorrow, the Stars
Skygreen Leopards - Life & Love in Sparrow’s Meadow
Snuff - Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other
Sound of Urchin - The Diamond
Sparkwood - Jalopy Pop
Spitalfield - Stop Doing Bad Things
Summer Lad - Themes: International
Sunburned Hand of the Man - Sunburned Hand of the Man
Upwelling - The Upwelling
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Various Artists - The Power of Music
Various Artists - Vancouver Complication
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The Weekend - Beatbox My Heartbeat
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