Coming up & coming down differently — a conversation with Pardoner

A lively conversation with the irreverent, amplified and amusingly ornery Pardoner; photographed by Jessica Hurst and Risograph by Alex Shen.

From the Bay Area/Vancouver characters that brought you Uncontrollable Salvation and Playin’ On A Cloud; Max Freeland, Trey Flanigan and River van den Berghe of Pardoner are readying a cycle of garage bop bangers with the new album Came Down Different. Recorded with Jack Shirley pre-pandemic, the trio makes some of the most triumphant and humorous slop hymns around. Blasting off with the rocket stoner prog punk step of "Donna Said", to the succinct "I Wanna Get High to the Music" pop satire, or sensational thrash gnar for the thinking person with "Spike", the chutzpah/hustle/struggle of "Broadway", as "Tranquilizer" blazes in chords that cut, while the band slows it down for the fortunes of "Lucky Day". The band rages against the empirical machines of "Totally Evil System", or the peppy evil empires of "Totally Evil Powers", aggro pop art grooves on "Bunny's Taxi", the heavy "Hammer Factor" shambles, the bold title cut to winding it all up with the pop garage send up closer — "Fuck You!". A record to make you smile, laugh out loud, cry and rock out to righteous riffs galore; Pardoner revels in the inherent weirdness that makes us all collectively different, special and all in this strange thing together called life.

Through a correspondence of cables, we had the chance for a jovial chat with the Pardoner bunch:

Tell us all the latest happenings with the Pardoner gang.

Trey Flanigan: I’ve just been working at the coffee store, working on some riffs here and there, making some art. And chilling.

Colin Burris: Just sitting tight and getting the record together which includes a lot of asking Trey to create even more original art in very quick succession. Besides that it’s just talking about how much fun a tour would be.

River van den Berghe: Everyday I have work and then I have chill time and then I usually text Max Trey and Colin about SpongeBob and then I smoke some weed.

Max Freeland: I have been vibing a lot. I play my basketball game on Xbox or record music at the studio I rent or I go to work. Pretty beast.

If you all could chronicle the band's history from the beginning to now like a pulp novel, tell us what it would be called with snippets of summary, highlights, forewords and the like.

Trey: It would be called The Holy Bible.

Colin: I think the book would be called Infinite Jest, because of how incredibly funny we all are, like clowns forever. Something along those lines

RvdB: I think it’d be called “Trey and his Little Green Aliens” and it’d be a story about having so much fun that it’s kinda scary. 

Max: Kind of a cross between The Power of Now and something really epic like the lord of the rings. We would be demonic little orcs who love to sit around and chit chat.

Give us all the latest goss from the Bay and Vancouver that has excited, intrigued, infuriated, inspired and invigorated you all lately.

Trey: The new Fake Fruit record comes out soon which is very good...

Colin: Fake Fruit, Urban Sprawl, the persistence of New Taraval Cafe, have all made me happy. The fact that people tell me that rent has gotten so much cheaper and it is still incredibly expensive has been annoying. I also don’t like how many people hang out in Golden Gate Park now.

RvdB: Ava from Wyatt Smith Band makes beautiful music. Vinnie moved back to Santa Cruz so now the Bay is fake. A pigeon pooped on me today.

Max: There is a new record in the works from the band Dumb from Vancouver BC. I have a feeling that will be completely legendary and maybe even psychotic. Trey river and our friend blake sell t shirts and stuff on a website called smile dungeon dot bigcartel dot com and those are beast. Colins other band world smasher has a 7 inch coming out and that’s gonna go crazy.

Up a tree with Pardoner; photographed by Jessica Hurst.

Meditations on the breakthrough moments in recording the irreverent, reinventive, boisterous, addicting, hilarious and heroic Came Down Different album with in the Bay with Jack Shirley.

Trey: I’d say it all came together pretty easily. We had fun the whole time. Me and Max secretly ate edibles and I was really scared Jack would find out...

Colin: I (the bassist Colin) had never actually heard the songs on guitar before. Trey and Max had emailed me tabs they wrote out and I was only allowed to practice and record with the drummer River. The first time I heard it was when I was allowed to hear Max and Trey record vocals, I was still not allowed to look at them. It was the most beautiful thing hearing it for the first time.

RvdB: Trey said, No River, ughhhh. Play dookah dookah dah dah dookah dah pow. Not dookah dookah dah dah dookah pow pow dah. Fuckin’ idiot. I despise you. I didn’t listen and he ended up being okay with the final product. Jack looked at Max and said I am God and pulled a gun on us. Super weird but I love Jack. He’s really pretty and so talented.

Max: I enjoyed myself, recording with Jack is super cool and we love him. and having studio days with the band is always nice. There were a couple parts where I was so high on pot I could hardly see straight. So that was awesome.

Insights on how the shutdown impacted approaches to creativity, collaboration and the like.

Trey: Luckily we made the record right before Covid, but since then we’ve just been sending each other demos and whatnot and waiting around ‘til we can rock once again.

Colin: The shutdown had nothing to do with our music or creative process, we did all of it before this happened. It sucks to try and do anything during it because it doesn’t feel fun if you can’t do it in the same room and Zooming Max in Canada is like drinking diet soda I hate it.

Max: Not being able to jam together is like if the Avengers broke up but actually somehow more epic? Epic in a bad way that is. Anyhoo we are slowly but surely sending ideas back and forth and getting that going.

Things that you all are excited about.

Trey: The record coming out, smoking grass, hopefully playing music again some day.

Colin: The show Warrior, a vaccine, the fall of the American Empire as we know it.

Max: Getting started on next album, new Fast and Furious movie hopefully on the horizon, listening to the new Fake Fruit album, eventual modern needs reunion, living another day and getting to listen to rock music.

Things you all are not excited about.

Trey:  Eating bugs, doing my taxes, watching my life go down the shitter...

Tips on executing the perfect power-chord hook (Pardoner style). 

Trey: You just have to have swag I guess.

Colin: Take your favorite song and play it backwards.

RvdB: Toke of blue dream, watch episode of SpongeBob where Sandy wakes up during hibernation, asks Robbie if he can spare some of his peanut butter.

Max: Listen to Yo La Tengo. Basically I don’t know.

Kernels of wisdom and postludes of fancy. 

Trey: You’re not going to become a beast overnight. Grind everyday until you become one.

Colin: Find out if you are mean to people when you are hungry and make that your personal responsibility to feed yourself if so.

RvdB: Ravioli Ravioli Give me the Formuoli.

Max: Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a 2020 first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch and Raven Software and published by Activision. It was released worldwide on November 13, 2020, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X and S. It serves as the sixth installment in the Black Ops series, and the seventeenth installment in the overall Call of Duty series. It is Treyarch's seventh Call of Duty title made as a lead developer and Raven's second.

Pardoner's new album Came Down Different will be available May 14 via Bar None Records.

Cover art for Pardoner’s single “Spike”.