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Review: Hot Panda - Go Outside [Album]

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Review: Hot Panda - Go Outside [Album]

Mint Records // "Go Outside is an album of troubles and anger"

by , and has been Read 1159 times.
Last Edited by: Jack Stovin July 5th, 2012.
Go Outside is Hot Panda’s third album. They are part of an ever growing Canadian music scene, but seem set apart from almost anything else. They feel like they have been created from an eclectic music taste chaotically rammed into a single punk-ish genre. The lead vocalist, Chris Connelly, describes this crazed style as "artful pop music, but played with a punk rock spirit."

Go Outside opens with the angry ‘One in the Head, One in the Chest’. The song shows, seemingly sarcastic, support for ‘the west’. Connelly cries out “Don’t hate the west ... All hail the west” amongst the roar of distorted guitars. It reincarnates some of the political rebellion and sounds of 70s punk. ‘Future Markets’ also follows this boisterous theme, but this time against modern money markets.

WATCH // Hot Panda - 'Future Markets'


Other songs are far from the distorted punk - ‘Littered Coins’ sounds like it is a cheerful ditty that lightly skips along, providing a stark contrast to the preceding ‘Future Markets’. However, the lyrics don’t join the tune with its careless feel. Connelly sings of getting of being left behind in relationships: “You and I, I’ll get pushed off to the side, you’ll be fine for sure.”

‘Holiday’, thrown in the middle of the album, is a bit of an oddball. While listening, I cannot shake the idea of it just being a mimic of The Pogues’s 'Fairytale of New York'. Whilst Connelly’s voice may be less of a drunken slur than Shane MacGowan’s (lead singer of The Pogues), the songs are too similar - the tempo, sound and even the vocals are almost identical. Maybe this idea is fortified by the line “Merry Christmas to you” - once heard it’s hard to shake the idea of ‘Holiday’ being a purely festive song.



Hot Panda’s Go Outside is an album of troubles and anger. The anarchy sung about in the lyrics is portrayed in the sound. In a way, it is a rebirth of the punk rebellion against society and politics.

Go Oustide is released on the 16th of July

Tracks to listen to
  • 'One in the Head, One in the Chest'
  • 'Littered Coins'

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