Panthers

Let's Get Serious
Dim Mak, 2003

I like songs about breaking up. It's not because my love life is turbulent, though I have had an "atom bomb" moment in the past – you know, when two people are attracted to each other like oncoming trains. I like break-up songs in the same way as songs about God, even though I'm not religious, and political hip-hop, even though I'm not black or particularly hard done by. I like all of these kinds of songs because they have passion.

Brooklyn band Panthers formed out of another group, Orchid and yada, yada, yada. In fact, I don't know much about them at all. Look them up on Wikipedia if you're interested. I only want to talk about one of their songs, 'Thank Me With Your Hands' – though the others aren't bad either. There are two types of break-up songs. Sad, softly-strummed odes to lovers lost and gigantic fireballs of emotion. This is quite emphatically the latter.

'Thank Me' is an average pop song played with amazing ferocity. It's loud, fast and dark. When the chorus kicks in, it's impressive if only as proof the band can play louder than during the first verse. Jayson Green's emotions flail about back and forth between anger and denial. "Let's not talk about it/ We never did, so why start now?/ Let's just go back to your place/ And not talk about it there," he sings in an utterly defeated voice. It's like watching someone dying of thirst struggle with a bottle of water they know is poisoned.

But that's got nothing on the last 90 seconds. The drumbeat gets heavier – you can actually hear the kit being hit harder – and both of the guitarists lose it. One of them sounds as if he's ripping strips of flesh off the thing while it screams. "STOP FUCKING!," Green howls. "Stop fucking with me and I'll stop fucking with you too!" All five musicians explode in a maelstrom of noise and it sounds like a fucking atom bomb. It's brilliant.