Live! From the Palace of Payne

Chthonic Records

Street: 05.31

Pentagraham Crackers = Dan Sartain + The Mr. T Experience

The fluid tempo and mood in Live! From the Palace of Payne flow from upbeat in one track, to depressive and longing in another. The genre seems fluid, too, and pinning it down may only last till the end of a riff.

Pentagraham Crackers pull mostly from twangy blues and punk while singing with a cracking drawl to form a genre of unclassifiable indie rock, framed with continuous, bending guitar leads—whether to calm me down or to engross me in the motion of the beat the way “The Afterlife” does.

The fourth track, “Noose For a Halo,” steps the tempo up after the slow “Danger Blues,” and adds head-bounciness with catchy vocals that sound very close to Will Sartain in the early days of Future of the Ghost—not that there’s anything wrong with that. –Steve Richardson