Panda and Child
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Panda and Child

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"Behold the Yellow Panda"

Panda and Child are a crew of roughly a half-dozen musicians from the northern and eastern parts of Connecticut. Indeed, they sound like a band operating away from the withering squints and crossed arms of the Northeast’s indie rock congnescenti.

Loose and often rambunctious, their set sounds like the mixtape your college-rock-loving older brother left at your parents’ house when he moved from the dorms to his own apartment, with muscular post-punk riffs devolving into flurries of skronk and buoyant bedroom indie-pop.

With guitars, basses, drums, keyboards, horns, flutes and hand percussion in the mix, and with several players moving between instruments throughout the set, Panda and Child’s sound is broad, ambitious, thoughtful, eclectic, playful, sometimes ramshackle and consistently mindful of the importance of melody over cool. Making art and having fun triumphs over being sceney.

Ironically, Panda and Child is about as scene as it gets (in a non-pejorative way). Around New Haven, those who can best attest to P and C’s musical worthiness are the aforementioned indie rock cognescenti.

Members of Panda and Child are linked with Rock Yer Socks, a DIY music booking and promotion group that brings regional and touring indie and punk acts to the musically-underfed, mostly to Hartford’s all-ages Charter Oak Center and to Grady’s Tavern in Manchester.

Panda and Child has served frequently as a modest, unassuming and rewarding house band for Rock Yer Socks. Get hip to what your musician friends already know this Saturday at Rudy’s, where Panda and Child plays with bass-and-drums spazzcore duo Bloarzeyd and Philadelphia’s Circles.
—Brian LaRue - New Haven Avocate


"Sparkle, Bubble"

Willimantic's awesome Wrench in the Works Collective is emerging as one of the state's coolest venues, and is Eastern Connecticut's closest approximation of Hartford's late, great La Paloma Sabanera. They hosted a flurry of great bands this weekend, but the one that really caught my ear was Panda and Child. The de facto music group of local indie booking agency Rock Yer Socks Productions, Panda and Child are a motley rock orchestra (kooky keyboards; accordion; violins; occasional flute). But where similar lineups actually try to pretend they actually are an orchestra (and fail), the Panda uses its diverse range of sounds to alternate between lush soundscapes and playful melodies. I was particularly appreciative of the way they skirted a typical indie pitfall: though they were occasionally cute and twee, they never once made me feel guilty for not being as full of wonderment as I was when I was, like, 5. Sweet, I love; saccharine is best left to the lab rats. - Hartford Advocate


"I AM as We All Are"

It's fitting that I AM would line up a handful of area acts known as much for their skills in networking, setting up shows and getting projects off the ground as they are of their musical merits: Manchester's Panda and Child (objectivity alert: this writer recently helped set up a show in New Haven for this band) is at the fulcrum of a statewide scene-uniting via the work of select band members with DIY shows-booking crew Rock Yer Socks and indie label Wooden Man Records. In ramping up their gigging schedule they're demonstrating to increasingly far-flung audiences that their sprawling, hooky indie rock is worth noting in its own right. - Hartford Advocate


Discography

"It Ain't Rocket Surgery" (EP--Wooden Man Records, Summer 2007)

"We Must Avoid these Dangers" (Full length--Wooden Man Records, forthcoming fall of 2008)

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Bio

Panda and Child began playing in 2005, when a handful of friends migrated from the fertile Midwest to the history paved streets of New England. There they established a new home, met and connected with new friends and comrades, and gave creative birth to Panda and Child.