Panchiko

Panchiko is beginning to settle into rockstar life. It’s different from how the UK band imagined it when they were teens, crafting ethereal, at times cosmic bits of heart-forward rock music to little outside interest, playing shows to nearly empty rooms. They set aside their hopes of becoming full-time musicians and pursued other careers. Their high school artistry became a distant memory. But that all changed in 2016 when an internet user discovered Panchiko’s discarded 2000 demo CD, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, in a Nottingham charity shop and posted it to 4chan to intrigue and fanfare. It took four years for Panchiko’s legions of dedicated fans to find the people behind the music, but when they did, Panchiko’s long let-go-of dreams became an imperative to pursue. Millions of curious listeners were swaying to their adolescent creations; it was time for them to meet their moment.

Panchiko — which reformed in 2021 with original members Andy Wright (keyboardist and producer), Owain Davies (vocalist and guitarist), and Shaun Ferreday (bassist) alongside new members Robert Harris (guitarist) and John Schofield (drummer) — pursued their new path with vigor. Upon discovering their own virality in 2020, they toured the world and wrote, recorded, and released their first album in 20+ years, 2023’s Failed At Maths. But after the thrill of the whirlwind came a new question. What comes next when your dreams come true? The answer is Ginkgo, a 13-track project that finds the band making some of their most introspective, cinematic, and moving music yet.

“The whole production has gone up ten-fold,” says Wright of the new album. They were finally able to quit their day jobs and dedicate themselves to music full-time, which changed their process completely. “If you have a bit of time, you can make something really great.” Plus, the band got their own studio in Nottingham, which they refer to as their “teenage dream.” With time and space, making Ginkgo became a very different, slower process than the creation of Failed at Maths, which they recorded while balancing their nascent music career with day jobs — alongside the stuff of life, like the birth of Wright’s child.

You can hear the result of this slower approach on tracks like “Chapel of Salt,” where the lyrics have a gravelly wisdom. “Obsolescence, greatest lessons/ You can’t afford to miss/Don’t go quietly in the night see/You’re too good for this,” sings Davies in a steady register, before the music veers towards the stars. Here too, the music feels bigger than Panchiko’s earlier work which was colored by a bedroom intimacy. The sonic and lyrical scale is grander, but maybe a bit more weary and lived-in as well.

The lessons of experience were on the band's mind. After touring the world with songs they had written as teenagers, Panchiko was beginning to craft music that reflected their current, more adult reality, like on “Lifestyle Trainers,” a drifty swirl of guitar plucks and synth pads that finds the band reflecting on the winding road of long term commitment. But even as Panchiko explored the particulars of middle age, the teenage versions of themselves (the versions that wrote D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L) were still floating in their minds, especially given the fact that Panchiko’s fans skew younger themselves. That’s clear on album standout “Shandy In The Graveyard” (featuring billy woods) which Davies shares “came from [him] reconnecting with the feeling of being the age of the audience that comes to see [them].” That youthful spirit can be felt in the song’s sonic world, as its production genre shifts between trip-hop and orchestral folk.
Woods’s inclusion is fitting given that American artists and the experience of touring throughout the States has made an indelible impression on Ginkgo. Most of Panchiko’s fans reside in the States, a place they had little connection to before their virality. “We don't normally do a lot of shows in England, because nobody likes us there,” jokes Wright. “We were too ahead of the time.” Seeing the expanse of a foreign country brought out new sounds and textures for the crew. It’s apt then that the album opener is titled “Florida.” “I was playing around with some samples in the van whilst we were driving through Florida,” remembers Davies of creating the track. “Writing on the road is cool because you don’t have all the toys in your toy box. You’re using what you got.” That makes sense given that “Florida” is marked by a diverse set of sounds and musical leaps, a vast landscape of guitar flourishes, and almost alien sonic textures.

New places, a new generation of listeners, a whole new life — the shock of their circumstances often leads Panchiko to reflect on the youth they’ve lost since they recorded their high school demo. “We had to delete ‘My Mortgage Repayments Are Going Up,’” laughs Wright, offering a sarcastic song title. And while they decidedly did not record an album about the tedium of adult living, they did make a record that truthfully reflects their grounded station in life. That was bolstered by the fact that Panchiko made the record largely at home in Nottingham. With that, the simple promises of home are evoked in every moment of the record, and on the cover — a picture of Wright’s young daughter that she took herself. “She had just turned two at that point. She ran off with my phone and our album cover was done,” Wright shares. Even though they paid an artist a hefty advance to make original artwork, they decided to forgo that art for the picture. It said it all. “It’s pure,” adds Davies. “It’s not contrived in any way.”

The cover is an invitation to consider the expanse of Panchiko’s experience, from adolescence and teenage artistry onward. The same wrenching honesty that attracted legions of fans to their teenage demos is the same truthful ethos that keeps them listening to new material. That full-hearted ethos may be most audible on the title track, “Ginkgo.” On it, Davies sings “You command the leaves to fall/The Ginkgo bends at will.” A rumination on the limits of control, collaboration, and fate, the song is an apt meditation for a band whose resurgence came about through a mix of luck, artistry, and then clear-eyed energy. They couldn’t “command the leaves to fall” when they were teens trudging up the improbable hill of rock star success, and they still can’t. But like the Ginkgo tree itself, their roots grow deep, which makes the going all the easier.