Night Panther :: "I Want You To Know"

With a melody in the verses that rides just outside of the austere brilliance of Seal's "Kiss From A Rose," Night Panther return with the sleek synth number, "I Want You To Know". The track is the lead song off the band's just released (and aptly titled) Kiss EP. While baiting the listener to sing, "There's so much a man can tell you, so much he can say," the band continue to sharpen their brand of nostalgic keyboard symphony. The friction coefficient nears zero as the arrangement slides along under its own power. The final movement slows before a stirring, chirping conclusion, all sunshine and synthetic horn punches into the future.

Night Panther :: "Pleasure To Meet You"

Opening with the supposed sanctimony and bombast of a pipe organ, Night Panther render a mild new twist on their procedural, sexy synth-pop on latest single, "Pleasure To Meet You". It runs down hill, the ascendancy of the keyboard progression and the tumbling, gravitational brilliance of the chorus. Each iteration of the hook drops further, a baroque resolution to some blithe nihilism. It's a Passion Pit jam taken back to the pre-modern, synthesizer tricks and crystalline vocals standing in as the rococo flourishes of a forgotten age. "It just makes me feel distant," they sing as the soaring architecture of "Pleasure To Meet You" collapses back to earth, the brief divinity of pop music.

Night Panther :: "Fire"

Night Panther initially sounds a lot like Princeton on latest single, "Fire", a restrained baroque piano progression that unleashes into a full synthesizer jam in its second movement. Previously, the band aimed itself at glossy and sensual synth arrangements, and "Fire" represents an evolution, the first movement tied to a pretty piano and string arrangement and a swooning lyric, "there's a fire under my nose." However, "Fire" proves relentlessly expansive, finishing with a kitchen-sink flourish where Night Panther channels the most satisfying moments of the Scissor Sisters catalog: big piano chord resolutions, synth horns, falsetto vocals. In short, it's a circus tent break up song, the last lyrics, "it's time for me to move on."

Night Panther :: "Two Weeks" and "Fever"

Night Panther, the creators of "Snudge", are heirs to the New York City sleek, animal band throne that Tigercity once occupied with divine right panache. Here, the band turns themselves on "Two Weeks", the song that made Grizzly Bear sort of famous three years ago, recast with an emphasis on colliding crystalline vocals. On "Fever," an original composition, the band makes their play for both commercial syncs and a slice of your sensual heart. Full of guitar bursts, a rolling bass line and horn punches, it's easy to see this cast in a national television campaign or on repeat in your iTunes. The central lyric, "you were always in my mind," a wonderful second movement to the sound crafted on "Snudge" and applied to Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks", making Night Panther a band to watch in the coming months, the east coast's answer to the rapidly increasing animal empire of LA's Wildcat! Wildcat!. Meaning, they'll either tour together or meet in Kansas City to tear the place to bits.



Download :: Night Panther - "Fever"

Night Panther :: "Snudge"

Cultural literacy is the new cultural feeling. In essence, it is better to know about a thing than it is to have an unexplained notion that the same thing is good or powerful. Or, at least, literacy organized its armies into a slew of cultural references and intellectual arguments, largely aimed at eliminating enthusiastic ignorance - which is totally understandable by the way - but by consequence (or maybe "collateral damage" works better here) literacy attacked and destroyed a world of aesthetics with a horde of explanations. It was, and now is, simply unacceptable to like something for its own purposes. You needed reasons. You needed cogency. The world looked at your loves and said, in effect," Prove it. I don't believe you." Night Panther wade into this territory with a very fun single, "Snudge." The chorus, which is whip-smart, suggests, "We take pleasure in being defensive forgetting our hearts were made for affection, we started a nasty fable." Interpretation might not be entirely valuable here as the band soars into the refrain over a methodical piano progression, the kind of thing you could love even if you weren't worried about the minds and hearts of a generation that, at times, chose argument over beauty. In fact, forget anyone said anything.