Get ready for Pandamonium

Hot Panda might be the only band with their own hot sauce flavour

  • Arts
supplied Hot Panda embrace their animalistic instincts tonight at The Grad Club.
Image supplied by: Supplied
supplied Hot Panda embrace their animalistic instincts tonight at The Grad Club.

When Chris Connelly, vocalist of Edmonton garage-pop band Hot Panda, says that “nobody wants to be the only person dancing at a show,” it’s hard to picture him as that person. His frenetic energy is infectious both in conversation and onstage with bandmates Heath Parsons, Maghan Campbell and Keith Olsen. Fresh off a European tour with the Von Bondies, Hot Panda is back to play their February release, Volcano…Bloody Volcano!, on Canadian soil. The album has a range from strolling reflection to spasmodic bliss that inspires even the most reluctant concert goers to dance. With charmingly adolescent enthusiasm, they’ve harnessed the now tried-and-true power of cheerful whimsy to wake us up.

The band experienced a quick ascension onto the Canadian indie radar. Volcano… Bloody Volcano! debuted at number one on Earshot!, the national chart for campus and community radio stations. That should come as little surprise. Hot Panda has arrived at a time with a seemingly insatiable need and developed niche for much of what they offer. They are most swiftly described as quirky, with an earnest but humourous performance style and sometimes near-absurd lyrics. Like other homegrown indie gems of the decade, they’re quite fond of, or at least intimately familiar with, nostalgia, often pining for childhood and a simpler time. Their upbeat melodies are performed with a yearning that nags of desperation, something Connelly describes as general disillusionment with the expected life journey.

“It’s mostly about being in my mid-20s and just noticing that people I grew up with are starting to get married, buy houses, have kids, become adults … It’s a trap that a lot of people get in in life.”

“It’s about living a life that doesn’t fall into that easy to digest track.You’re not sure what you should do. Sometimes it’s like, ‘Wow it would be easy to get married and have kids.’ It seems like that’s what people do. It’s more steady—the other way the ups are really up and the downs are really down.”

We don’t hear much about the really down downs on Volcano though, other than the worry they might eventually succeed. Hot Panda seems to hope their hand-clapping might stave it off. When Connelly sings, “Find your crowd and shout it loud,” we know he has found his crowd, and been nominated as one of it’s spokespeople.

Volcano… Bloody Volcano! was nominated for both the Verge Music Award and the Western Canadian Music Award for best independent artist.

“They don’t tell you. A friend of mine was like, ‘Hey, you’re nominated’. ‘Oh yeah? We are? Cool,’ Connelly said.

That’s quite a feat for a band that was touring in a 1977 ambulance only two years prior.

“We just got it on Autotrader, it was like $900. Really cheap. We got our money’s worth,” Connelly said.

The ambulance isn’t the only quaint anecdote complimenting Hot Panda’s quirky tunes. Their label, Mint Records, also offers a special Hot Panda hot sauce.

“They sent us a whole bunch of samples. We had a taste testing party where we chose the one,” Connelly said. “It’s ridiculously hot. We wanted to be hot so it had bite, but you don’t want to be inaccessible.”

Kind of like the band itself. As they head back into the studio this winter, we’ll see whether they go in the direction of the bite or the popularity. Both seem probable options, given the group’s penchant for catchy pop melodies and unexpected musical freak-outs.

Hot Panda is another band with another alt-life anthem album, an encouragement to eschew the shackles of the nuclear and conventional—nothing ground-breakingly original, but they do it well. After all, if it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, isn’t that what matters?

“You want to have a bit of bite but not so much that people are like, ‘I don’t want to eat this.’”

Hot Panda play tonight at The Grad Club with P.S. I Love You and The Torrent.

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