Brigadoon
( April 2005 Mint Records )
Brigadoon is the third full-length from the still-young Vancouver-based group P:ano, and the first released by Mint. P:ano’s first two albums, When It’s Dark & It's Summer and The Den, found a band working to find a voice of its own in contemporary indie rock. As it turns out, however, P:ano’s voice is uniquely eclectic, idiosyncratically engaging a diversity of musical and thematic interests. This restless creativity is exactly what it means to be P:ano, eschewing one sound for a multitude, taking up whatever is musically contingent when necessary.
Even back when they first began, P:ano already sounded like more than just their audible influences (The Beach Boys, Yo La Tengo, Low, The Magnetic Fields, Microphones), but no matter what influences they draw upon, Brigadoon proves that the sum is always greater than the parts. Brigadoon is great pop music: a real achievement for a young band with much promise, still dedicatedly searching the fields of inspiration for traces and clues of the truth of pop perfection, articulated through adventurous and smart musical miscellany.