Panchiko at the Crystal Ballroom, 10/26/22
A speck appears in a clear blue sky, in the 1986 animated film, The Castle in the Sky. At first it is barely perceptible—like the wink of a gem—then it burgeons into view: a hulking island, brushed with vivid green trees, walled in white stone. “Laputa,” the young heroine calls it: the civilization of a lost generation, now staggeringly real before her eyes.
I feel this sense of surrealism as Panchiko—a band long rumored to be fiction—perform the haunting, opening notes of “Laputa” at Somerville Theatre’s Crystal Ballroom. The room is hushed. Couples sway on each other’s shoulders in baggy T-shirts and clunky silver jewelry. When vocalist Owain Davies lifts his head and sings into the mic: “Daddy fell into the sun…” his voice is startlingly childlike and pure, betraying his stocky, bearded appearance. But unlike the unfulfilled yearning the lyrics express, Panchiko emanates gratitude from the stage to finally be performing on tour, 21 years after they abandoned their dreams of rock stardom. “You melted our old man hearts,” the band later posted on Instagram, under a snapshot of the Ballroom’s crowd ecstatically making hand-horns and hearts at the camera.
The story of Panchiko’s rise from obscurity is often retold whenever the band is mentioned, and for good reason: it’s a good story. It begins one afternoon in 2016 in a charity store in Nottingham, England, where an anonymous 4chan user found an intriguing CD, featuring a drawing of a manga girl on its cover and the wry title, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L. Like myself, though, he was most intrigued by the airy yet fertile music inside—as if Thom Yorke fronted Sweet Trip—artistically ahead of its 2000 release date. However, when the user tried to find out more about Panchiko, the internet came up dry, which was unusual even for the most obscure of bands. Soon, the hunt to identify Panchiko multiplied across the internet’s underground music scene, with whole forums and Discord servers dedicated to compiling leads. It took four years—and many discounts of the band as fake or a social experiment—before one fan finally managed to message Owain through his inactive Facebook page. At first thinking the message was a joke—as only 30 Panchiko CDs were in existence—Owain and the rest of the band became deeply touched when they learned of the legions of fans who had been searching for them.
Propelled by this interest, Panchiko regrouped, re-released D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L—clean of the disc rot which had infected the Nottingham CD, as well as a compilation of unreleased demos titled Ferric Oxide, and embarked on a U.S. tour. Fast forward again, I’m in Crystal Ballroom, and the anticipation was worth it.
Panchiko kicked off their set with a sunny, acoustic song “Stuck” off Ferric Oxide, then my favorite “All They Wanted” off the same record, driven by one the most gorgeous, addictive guitar melodies I’ve heard of late. As a more recent Panchiko fan who hadn’t ventured beyond D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, I was stunned by the quality of these demos, and highly recommend anyone reading this to give it a listen. Of them, “Untitled Demo 1997” was a highlight, which boasts maybe Panchiko’s best guitar line, all lush and twangy beneath Owain’s pining calls. Spliced between these briefer cuts, Panchiko also played four songs from D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, saving fan favorites “Laputa” and “D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L” for last, which certainly made for a rewarding finale.
After every couple songs, Panchiko also thanked the audience members for coming, with the sincerity and bashfulness of bands freshly thrust into the spotlight. It’s then I notice a rabbit skeleton figurine perching on the keyboard—a gift from a fan, likely. Maybe because of the miraculous circumstances that brought Panchiko out of retirement, their connection with their fans feels especially intimate and organic. And, in the surrealism of it all, gives the band a degree of absurd humor. “Lots of silly sausage business,” I remember one of them describing their music as… they’re from the U.K. alright!
While the default move in the pit was head-nodding, during some of the edgier moments—like the soaring distortion and screams that draw out their closer “Kicking Cars”—I was holding my breath for a mosh to start (it didn’t happen, but I heard at some other shows it did—shoutout to my hometown Philly!) The show over, no encore, crowds of teenagers dispersed into the chilly night to wait for the Davis shuttle or smoke idly on the sidewalk.
In a lot of ways, the floating island of Laputa is a lot like a CD abandoned in a charity shop, nearly lost to disc rot. But while Castle in the Sky ends with Laputa blown apart by flames, Panchiko was salvaged from the decay of time and disillusionment. Maybe it wasn’t inevitable that “heaven’s doors are miles away” while “you’re stuck to the ground,” as Owain mourned in “Laputa.” Rather, with every lead carefully filed away by Panchiko’s devoted fans, those doors lowered little by little until they were just hovering, brimmed in light, a couple feet above the wooden floor of Crystal Ballroom.
