Canadian indie-rockers Hot Panda have announced that their new album ‘Go Outside’ will hit shelves on July 16th later this summer.
While 2010's live-off-the-floor album ‘How Come I'm Dead?’ partially reflected the Olympic chaos within which it was recorded, ‘Go Outside’ - the third album from Vancouver via Edmonton's Hot Panda - reveals a band investing its energy into a stable mode of creation, the overall sound of the album featuring a more mature and thoughtful tone.
While lyrically tackling crippling social disorders like cynicism, depression, and close-mindedness, ‘Go Outside’ manages to retain the energy, humour, and sub-genre diversity of earlier Hot Panda albums and their renowned live performances, what principal songwriter Chris Connelly describes as "artful pop music, but played with a punk rock spirit."
Connelly tackles some fairly intense subject matter on this record. While their last album was relatively philosophical, here he hits on visceral socio-political topics like “with us or against us” extremism on the opening ‘One in the Head, One in the Chest’ and the sad state of the market-based global economy on the brooding ‘Future Markets.’ Other tracks provoke more quiet moments of reflection, like worrying about being left behind by your people in ‘Littered Coins’ and not falling to possessiveness and jealousy in a relationship in ‘Boats.’
Yet, this is not a transition from the band’s more freewheeling, light-hearted roots to soul-baring egotism and moralizing. This album is not about revelling in negative thought patterns, but the struggle and value in overcoming them. Connelly's sense of humour shines through on a rather sarcastic, fictional account of being in a relationship with a selfish person on ‘Holidays’ and the jaunty musing of waiting for things to peak in ‘Maybe Now?’ Of course, the title track itself offers an affirmation for being positive, open, and excited. It's pure joy, a notion reinforced by the unabashed cover art.
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