Feed your mind
Panurge wants to expand your consciousness with ’60s-style prog pop
Jen Zoratti

Panurge is often dismissed by record reviewers as an ‘experimental’ band.

Perhaps ‘inventive’ would be a better word to describe a group that makes ’60s pop modern and academic.

Yes, you read that right — academic.

You see, the members of this Vancouver-based quartet — Chris Lovell, C.L. McLaughlin, Daniel Byrne and ex-Winnipegger Jon Schubert — actually attended university classes instead of ditching and getting drunk. In the case of Panurge, owning some parchment isn’t about a having fallback career so much as it’s about being better songwriters.

“Our songwriting really stems from a combination of our interests and our education,” Schubert says over the phone from Montreal. “We’re all interested in psychology and ideas about religion. I have a background in economics and math, so all these factors made my brain branch out, and I started applying that to music. We’re all intellectually hungry people.”

It makes sense, then, that Panurge would make tunes for other intellectually hungry people. Their latest disc, Walking in the Fog (which was released Aug. 1), features tunes that are lyrically whimsical and occasionally screwed up.

Take Amazon Molly, for example. If recorded by any other band the track would likely be about a tall girl named Molly. It’s actually about a breed of fish.

“We don’t want to just write girl-boy songs,” Schubert says. “We really draw from everywhere, and I think Amazon Molly is the best example of that.

“Actually, we were joking about the next Panurge song. We read an article about how cats secrete a hormone that works on people’s brains. Like, a cat can force a mouse to not care about its well-being so it’s easier to catch. So basically, cats make you crazy or maybe just have a more profound effect than we thought.”

Cat hormones aside, lyrical prowess isn’t the only thing that sets Panurge apart from the pack. Though influenced by traditional ’60s pop, Panurge is one of that rare breed of bands that don’t try to sound like every other group which cites TV as an influence. Panurge kind of sounds like The Kinks and has wonderfully addictive hooks, but that’s as far as it goes. The band’s sound is better characterized by modern electronic elements and keys, and the songs often need to be stripped down so they can be played live.

“The show rocks a bit more than the album,” Schubert says. “Certain things are simplified.”

Though the band is touring with some zany acts, Panurge isn’t quite as energetic as co-conspirators Run Chico Run and The Old Soul.

“We don’t have any pretensions about being a wild and crazy band,” Schubert says. “We want to write music and lyrics that are interesting to the brain and to the ears.

“And, if we’ve learned anything, it’s that writing interesting music doesn’t always make one experimental.

“We’re not really bothered by people who tag us as experimental. I mean, we have trouble pegging ourselves,” Schubert says. “But I don’t think we’re really that experimental. We’re not a 70-minute German noise piece or anything.”