Chasing Fridays: Superheaven, kuru, Panchiko live, and more

It's Friday once again, and I've got another helping of Chasing Fridays – my weekly roundup of music criticism and gig reviews. This week, I was happy to see semi-defunct bands from the 2010s return with great new singles that pick up right where they left off. And I was thrilled to hear a full-length album from one a digicore pioneer that feels just as relevant in 2024 as their music did in 2020. On the live show front, I went to a Panchiko gig and experienced generational culture shock. It was awesome (and not awesome), and I wrote about that down below.

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Superheaven - "Long Gone"

Earlier this year, I voiced my disinterest in Webbed Wing, a band featuring two members of Superheaven (including singer-songwriter Taylor Madison) that, to me, have always sounded like a sub-standard version of Superheaven. I pleaded for the guys to put all of their focus back on their previous band, and return to writing "depressing, heavy-on-the-soul grunge bangers" instead of middling power-pop under the Webbed Wing moniker. Thankfully, my prayers were answered. Superheaven's new song, "Long Gone," is a brilliant return to dead-eyed form; sinewy riffage, a banger chorus, and the kind of weary existentialism that conjures cold car seats and stale air at the start of a dreadful 6 a.m. commute. "We’re so past the point that we could ever be saved," Madison croaks with his rugged, Seattle-via-Scranton drawl, a sentiment that's extra relatable now for obvious reasons.

"Long Gone" is a big deal for Superheaven. It's their first material since their 2015 sophomore LP, Ours Is Chrome, which followed their well-liked (among Run For Cover heads) 2013 debut Jar, but failed to launch them beyond the sub-Title Fight underground. More pressingly, "Long Gone" is Superheaven's first new track since their unexpected TikTok virality in 2023, when their 2013 cut "Youngest Daughter" suddenly went viral, crashed into the mainstream rock charts, and ended up getting sampled by Yeat and BNYX on a song earlier this year. Now, their brawny riffs and moody musings fit snugly into the FFO: Deftones zeitgeist, right alongside peers like Fleshwater, Narrow Head, and Superheaven's U.K. contemporaries in Basement. I'm happy they're back, but I'm more happy that the new song is a worthy evolution of their Dirt-meets-Hum sound.

Peaer - "Just Because"

Peaer are a band who I'll always associate with my college years in the mid-2010s. An era when I faithfully consumed every release Tiny Engines put out and got many of my music recs from the Facebook pages of cig-smoking art-school kids who booked DIY shows in the Albany region. The band's 2016 self-titled LP was a heads pick at the beginning of the Duster resurgence, right when the emo revival kids were growing into slowcore adults who suddenly thought Palm's Trading Basics was more important than Foxing. Peaer's 2019 LP, A Healthy Earth, was even better, though I don't think it got quite the same level of attention, and the band have been more or less quiet in the post-COVID years.

No more. Peaer returned this week with a new tune ]called "Just Because," and it has all the signature qualities that made them stand out to me in the previous decade. To me, Peaer's music has always asked the question: what if Pile's foundation was in slowcore instead of post-hardcore? Singer-songwriter Peter Katz shares some of Rick Maguire's affinity toward jostling time signatures and needley licks that make your brain feel the numb tranquility of being three beers deep. However, while Pile purposefully take their hands off the wheel and give in to howling freak-outs, Peaer always retain level-headed control over their musical vessel – even when they're fully rocking in passages like the funky breakdown in "Just Because," easily the danciest moment in Peaer's catalog. I like it when good bands make new music.

kuru - re:wired

If you spent digicore summer scanning the Soundcloud pages of Novagang members and arguing about the boundaries of hyperpop, then you remember kuru. Their 2020 song "clueless," featuring kurtains, is a classic from that long-ago era; a glitched-out beat, pitched-up and punched-in rap flows, and an overall presentation that feels both off-the-cuff and eternally precious in a uniquely teenage way. Digicore has been simultaneously deaded, buried, and reborn in the four years since, and on their long-awaited debut album, re:wired, kuru proves why they're one of the scene's most venerable holdouts.

I like to think of this record, released last week via the crucial deadAir label (Jane Remover, quannnic), as the angelic inverse to d0llywood1's devilish This is Just a Dream (and soon I will awake), another 2024 full-length debut (that kuru guests on) by one of digicore's quintessential torchbearers. While d0llywood1 embraced synapse-fraying beats and battery-acid vocal effects that aimed to conjure the white-noise bliss of My Bloody Valentine, kuru's evolution on re:wired is more Slowdive-ian; a misty sound bath of heavy-hearted emotion rather than a jacuzzi jet of bit-crushed angst.

Listening to re:wired feels like living in a world where every surface is made from the creamy white plastic that Macbooks were coated with in the mid-2000s. Bass is used minimally compared to the overblown 808s of old-school digicore, with kuru often opting for taut drum breaks or tapered bass bursts that skitter and rumble beneath heavenly synth clouds. kuru's deadAir labelmates, Jane Remover and quannnic, have each ventured into shoegaze and post-rock on recent albums, and there're select moments on re:wired where kuru flirts with joining them. The emo cadences of ambient breakcore standout "Halcyon" lend it a rock sturdiness, and "vo://id" uses synth drums to dabble in the kind of celestial indie-pop that fellow digicore expat Twikipedia mastered on this year's for the rest of your life.

It's re:wired's title track that most effectively blends the two styles, bringing together Parannoul-inspired washes of clipped synth guitar (or guitar-like synths?), clomping digicore raps, and seraphic mumble-singing that's warm and tingly like all the best shoegaze is. At 18 tracks and 45 minutes, re:wired is practically a triple-album by digicore standards, but I can't think of many other artists from this milieu who'd be capable of pulling it off with this level of finesse and craftsmanship.

Panchiko, Trauma Ray @ Roxian Theater

When I stepped into the Panchiko show, my first five minutes were spent marveling. I squinted in disbelief at the comically long merch line snaking down the right side wall, comprised entirely of teens and young 20-somethings eagerly waiting to snatch up Panchiko merch a half hour before the opening band even went on. My friend and I, each within two weeks of turning 30, were the oldest non-parents in the room. Ninety five percent of the audience were zoomers who dressed in today's standard-issue alt garb; an era-crossing and subcultural mashing of Hot Topic mall-gothiness and e-girl/e-boy tweeness. The 1,400 capacity Pittsburgh venue was probably only two-thirds full, but the majority of the fans were crammed into the pit in front of the stage, and there was a palpable excitement in the air that I only feel at shows where the median age is below 21. There wasn't a single aloof, arms-crossed beer-slurper in the entire audience, and when I spoke to members of the opening band Trauma Ray after their set, they confirmed that every show on this Panchiko tour is like this; hordes of deeply invested young people, many of them first-time concertgoers, coming to see the British headliners with a near-religious fervor.

It wasn't the simple fact that a popular band was playing Pittsburgh that rattled me. It was that the people in that room and their tenor throughout the night represented a generational moment in indie rock that's distinctly un-millennial. As I stood there in the foyer as well-dressed 18-year-olds skirted by me clutching records and giggling with their friends, I couldn't help but think of MJ Lenderman, who I saw play to 350 fans at a different Pittsburgh venue just last month. If you read indie rock music journalism in 2024 and engage with the professional scribes who write about it, then you could reasonably infer that the North Carolina songwriter is a rising star in the genre who's emblematic of where indie rock is at in the current moment. And I think that is, in many ways, true.

However, while I stood in that Panchiko crowd that dwarfed the size of Lenderman's audience, I was confronted with just how marginal Lenderman's ascent feels relative to another – even more decidedly uncommercial – indie band like Panchiko. (Notably, Panchiko's self-released 2000 demo surfaced on 4Chan in 2016, picking up a cult following that beckoned the long-defunct band back into existence, and spurred what's now become a legitimate career; sold-out tours around the world, a new album in 2023, and tens of millions of Spotify streams this year alone, according to a recent press release). I'm sure Lenderman will be playing a venue this size the next time he comes through Pittsburgh, and maybe in a few years' time his crowd will make Panchiko's look paltry. But at this point in 2024, Panchiko, who've never been covered in Pitchfork or Stereogum, and who've mostly been written about as a sort of internet curio, not a band whose music is demonstrative of what indie-rock's current inheritors want to hear, are indisputably more relevant to the zeitgeist both online and off.

Of course, Panchiko's music isn't any more artistically valid because they had more bodies in the room or because their audience was considerably younger than the fans I stood beside at Lenderman's show. In fact, while I'm moderately intrigued by the songs on Panchiko's now-iconic D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L demo, I did not enjoy their sound in the live setting. Like many bands who flirt with ethereal guitars and supple vocalizations, Panchiko have been repeatedly mischaracterized as a shoegaze band despite not having a single song in their repertoire that I'd describe as such. The easiest reference point I and many others reach for is Radiohead circa OK Computer or Kid A, but there's a shabby psych-pop throughline in their sound (particularly on a late-Nineties tune like "All They Wanted") that's like if an Elephant 6 group like The Olivia Tremor Control were heavy into Massive Attack.

I can definitely see why a generation of indie fans raised on Car Seat Headrest, Alex G, and Weatherday would gravitate toward Panchiko's lo-fi post-rock sound, but I couldn't determine what made fans so devoted that numerous people shrieked, "I LOVE YOU," at their sound guys, and repeated the shouts of adoration every time the band of smiley, 40-something everymen paused between songs. These kids loved Panchiko, and I really wanted to join them, but just couldn't get there. While their cryptic background, esoteric song titles, and manga cover art lends their recorded material a mysterious je ne sais quoi, the sheer normality of their live show brought their most gaping flaw into focus: I don't think their songs are very good. The synth textures were elementary, the occasional guitar solos hokey, and the dynamic inclinations of each song were exhaustingly predictable after the first three go-arounds. Moreover, I found Owain Davies' Thom Yorkeian bleating to be profoundly grating after a few tracks. He sang damn-near every line with the same crescendoing swell, and sounded more like a guy projecting his voice because he can rather than a singer using his croon to serve an artistic idea.

When I say Panchiko's music "isn't for me," I don't mean that their sound belongs to a genre I'm unfamiliar with or am incapable of comprehending. On the contrary, I feel like Panchiko make a style of music that's reminiscent of countless bands I enjoy, but still fails to deliver on what I want out of that style. Rather, they're not "for me" in the sense that their music belongs to a different generation of indie-rock fan. And even though I dislike them, I have the utmost respect for the kids who do. The indie fans 10 years my junior – the ones who've made Panchiko into a worldwide phenomenon – are engaged in a music discourse ecosystem (Rate Your Music, TikTok, The Needle Drop's YouTube comments) that critics and fans my age are largely oblivious to, even though those spaces are having a more tangible impact on the indie zeitgeist than any one music publication.

Listen, I'll reach for the songs on MJ Lenderman's Manning Fireworks over D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L nine times out of ten, but in a couple years when I reflect back on the 250+ artists I saw live in 2024, the Panchiko gig will feel like a more accurate marker of where indie rock was this year than almost anything else. New Yorker profiles be damned.