“Well, maybe the next time around, they’ll push themselves to make a better album.” Only the most idealistic (a.k.a. inexperienced or terrified of an ass-kicking) music writer would offer this sort of pipe-dream when justifying an overtly negative review. Oddly enough, Black Panda’s Shake Me 7” EP (4-songs) does this fairytale duty by existing and providing other bands with a model to avoid when crafting their respective recordings. That is, of course, if they can remember anything about Black Panda after this aggressively-forgettable EP makes its one and only visit to the turntable. Hailing from the land of too many damned bands (Austin, TX), Black Panda is but a few minutes extracted from the Goner Records blooper reel. Each track features vocals barked/sung in a boring place equidistant from both Brit-snotty and Japanese-unintelligible, along with the particular neutering of riffs, beats, and tempo that’s mired garage-punk ever since Estrus, Norton, Crypt, and Sympathy launched an early-to-mid-‘90s campaign to choke the genre with filler. Savvy listeners will be scared off by the combined primary color AND zoological/naturalist qualities of the band name, but the chosen audience is known for pathological acceptance of like-minded tedium or whatever is recommended by the demographic’s upper 10% (the founders + some great bands). When folks form bands after learning how to mimic their heroes instead of learning what was special about them in the first place, the world gets clutter like Black Panda. Not coming to an eBay auction any time soon. 300 copies. (www.supersecretrecords.com)
(Andrew Earles)