A lovely life

Khruangbin in concert. Zurich. Of course I had to be there. Took the local train to the venue, walked in, looked around, straight to the merchandise stand. Get a t-shirt, and who knows, maybe there is some unexpected vinyl to be scored. And sure enough, there were these albums I had never seen before, could I see them please, sure here you go, and I’m like what’s that record company, never heard of it, sure isn’t Khruangbin, and then I see the hype sticker talking about an “iconic Indian band”. Ah. A band that has a name like a record label.

Embarrassingly enough, I had missed the simple fact that Khruangbin had a supporting act in store for us. Peter Cat Recording Co. Okay, I said, let’s listen. About forty-five minutes later, all smiling and happy, I jumped up from my seat, rushed down to the entrance hall, dashed over to the merch stand and bought all three PCRC albums. And a t-shirt.

The only worry that I had was what I usually call the “Pastis Problem” – and I think you will know what I mean by that. When I first traveled to France, it was a nice and sunny late summer, and my friends and I thought it was the coolest thing ever to sit outside a nice little bistro and order a glass of 51. Pastis. Anise-flavored liquor that is mixed with ice and cold water. We loved the stuff so much, we each bought a bottle and took it home.

You know what followed. A nice Sunday afternoon somewhere in Germany, sun about to hit the final stretch before calling it a day, and I’m like hey let’s get that bottle of Pastis on the table out on the terrace and turn a mundane dusk into an elegant crépuscule.

As you will have guessed, it didn’t work. Just like an ouzo will only taste great in Greece, in the summer, on vacation. My fear here was quite the same. What if I totally love this music live on stage, not having known anything about the band and their songs, and then I come home, listen to the album and it’s like having a Pastis in Paderborn or Pembroke?

It didn’t happen. They are lovely albums, and the joy of listening to them is clearly not receding. Like this one. “Bismillah”. Praise God is what it means, and people say it before starting something important. Like a career. Or, like a marriage, what I presume is being celebrated on the album’s cover, with a bottle of Ruinart spilling part of its content, frozen in mid-air like the joyful smile of the funny father-in-law who just opened it.

We need to get back to the thing about “the iconic Indian band” though. And the misleading assumptions someone from outside India will almost inevitably have when they read that. Or when a review of this album mentions Bollywood somewhere. Bing! There you go. A guy with a sitar, Indian folk elements, some kind of fusion sound, or even worse, suspecting “World Music”.

Luckily, PCRC is none of that. You play any song from any of the three albums to anyone and ask them where these guys are from and you’re more likely to hear “Brooklyn” than “Delhi”. Just listen to the singer, Suryakant Sawhney. A sometimes slightly awkward and yet still effortlessly smooth crooner that is able to evoke some kind of Frank Sinatra reincarnation without ever running the risk of spreading nostalgia. There is a reason why he’s so not Delhi-esque in his delivery – he spent a part of his life in California. Might as well have been next door to Dean Martin in Vegas.

If you want to be hooked to their music within less than ten minutes, simply listen to “Heera”. Irresistibly cool and funny and smart and smooth. In a way it illustrates the special attraction that PCRC has, this intriguing mix of being cool and nerdy at the same time, and in large amounts. You’ll know what I mean when you look at them perform. And when they suddenly switch from crooning to partying, when the disco ball is suddenly lit up and they shed that little coat of shyness, everyone starts grinning. Pure glee.

Like on “Memory Box”, a beautiful and innocently happy Disco tune that instantly reminded me of the early 2000s when Louie Austen had a couple of slightly cheesy club hits, and one of them – “Hoping” – was even remixed by Matthew Herbert. Play “Memory Box” at your next birthday party and the happiness index of your guests will go through the roof.

Peter Cat Recording Co. make stuff that is hard to describe, and that’s a big compliment. They can be thoughtful, make poetic comments about life in the capitalist world as in “Where The Money Flows”, and even when it’s about love and life and all those things, the position they keep within their lyrics is interwoven with threads of losing, failing, disappointing, disappearing. A lovely song like “Heera” opens with “This is how it ends / no money / no friends / and I just got a hard-on”. A piece that seemingly is about love like “Floated By” sounds like spring and flowers and bouncy walks in the park, and yet – time is floating by, we are floating by, and it might just be that we just keep floating without ever arriving anywhere. Or the even more bouncy and summery “Freezing” that sounds like sunny innocence – with Sawhney dropping lyrics like “You’ll find me on a broken bridge bleeding bruised and woken up”.

But that’s what life is like, isn’t it? The world is greedy and stupid, getting dumber by the minute, people are throwing their votes and lives down the throats of people who don’t give a rat’s ass about them, love hurts and money’s too tight to mention. No reason not to be light-footed, joyful and poetic about it. Or even have a wonderful party with all your best friends, even if you’re broke next morning. I totally like what the band says on their Bandcamp: “Good luck out there. Please help one another, open your hearts and wallets to everyone, don’t stop fighting, don’t be scared, don’t be stupid.”

There is a lot to love and to celebrate on “Bismillah”. Like the wonderful little guitar riffs and melodies, the horns that have enriched the sound of PCRC so immensely, or the playfulness that turns sort of an ambient piece into an exuberant march – “Vishnu <3”.

If you look up the lyrics of “Heera” on the web you will find two different versions of the chorus. While most websites say it’s “I could live a lovely life”, at least one other claims it’s “I could live a lovely lie”. Yes, it’s quite audible that it’s “lovely life” – but it’s not entirely impossible for a PCRC lyric to have gone the other way too. And I like that. No matter how much people continue to want things to be simple, one-dimensional and somehow “clear”, the reality will always be full of ambivalence, ambiguity, complexity. Great things to sing about and dance to. Peter Cat Recording Co. prove it with every little song. Go see these guys on stage and buy all their albums. Especially this one.

Release for review:
PETER CAT RECORDING CO. – BISMILLAH – PANACHE – PACHE 003

Buy this album on Bandcamp: Click
Buy the digital version on Bandcamp: Click