The West Australian - The Capital - Panics are Taking on The World

The Final gig on a national sold out tour, highlighted by a run of sold out shows in their adopted home of Melbourne felt like a celebration of the recent success; the singles 'Dont fight it'  & 'Feeling is gone' are radio & TV staples and 3rd album 'Cruel Guards' was effectively album of 2008. The Panics began their homecoming with the melancholic 'Something in the garden' before treating the packed venue to a couple of faves from the latest disc in 'Creaks' and Motown adoring 'Ruins'. The Morricone flavours came to the fore during a brief encore of 'Get us Home' and 'Fire on the Hill' off their sun kissed full length debut 'A house on a street in a town I'm from'. The latter instrumental saw the band kick up their heels-it was the final gig of a watershed tour after all-with Wootton dancing up a strorm and Jules Douglas revving up the crowd. From Perth to the World, The Panics are on an exponential rise. They are going to be huge. Simon Collins The West Australian   

Xpress Magazine

Home grown heroes, The Panics, returned for a sold out show. Given their increasing popularity in Australia and overseas the locals may be feeling the need to catch them live before apprearances become infrequent. The have now developed a signature sound  that is unmistakably their own and seem ready to take on the world. Guitarist Drew Wootton was quick to get into his blissed out , eyes closed head nodding routine which sees him become one with his telecaster and peel off notes flawlessly. The faithful were rewarded with half a dozen tracks from the lates album with some favourites like 'Cash' and 'Kid you're a dreamer'.. The real knock out punch was 'Dont Fight it', which has a gospel motown feel and inspired the crowd to sing along. Finishing the set with the chunky spagetti western riffs of 'Sundowner'. Repeated audience requests for 'Fire on the hill' had gone unanswered so an encore was never in doubt.What transpired was something unique when indeed the much loved opening riff of 'Fire' was heard. Halfway thru thru the track Wootton's guitar gave up , despite some frantic running around to find another he gave up and saw the song out with an entertaining jig, which was a highlight of the show.  Simply Brilliant!   Steve Groves Xpress

Drum Magazine

It's about 11.30 and The Panics are playing to a very very full Capaital and as they begin their last song of this impressive homecoming gig Drew Wootton's guitar stops doing what it should be doing. After scambling to bypass his peddle board, swapping guitars and whatever else he could think of before assuming the role of Bez, dancing like a madman and conducting a mass clap-along from the front of stage. The welcome The Panics received was again indicative of how successful last year's 'Cruel Guards' has been. Embracing it's success the setlist drew heavily from that album. But theres reason they're playing the whole of the album; it's the best a WA band has made in a long long time. Though stand out track 'Get us Home' would have been more than an adequate way to wrap it up, it ran perfectly into 'Fire on the Hill',which despite -or perhaps because of-its shambolic ending, will have lots of new fans hunting down the first record this week. And no one deserves it more. Michael Inglis Drum Media 

Rolling Stone USA

The Kings of Leon’s Nathan Folowill came to check out MGMT’s extremely well-attended gig, but while the Brooklyn band were stretching out their psych-pop tunes in jammier directions he was raving about the Panics, an Aussie act he’d seen the day prior. “You know how normally when you hear a band you can list the bands that influenced them or that they ripped off straight away?” he asked. “We couldn’t do it for them, they sounded like nothing I’d heard before, really melodic, almost atmospheric.”  Rolling Stone USA

Brag Magazine - Single of the Week
Cruel Guards
This Perth band finally bled through to the mainstream, where they deserve to be. The Panics are a radio band and the move toward the middle has reinforced the strucvtural discipline and melodic invention that keeps you engaged. “Don’t fight it” drips with Motown and soul references; the BV’s are almost do-wop and the horns punch through with vigour. The lyric is rich and semi-abstract. There’s a clarity and scope here that’s the antithesis of the bedroom production on their first self titled eps. Having said that “Give me some good luck” was so lush and private. I’m almost left wanting for that Stone Roses on valium vibe. It doesn’t matter because The Panics are going for it and they’re just sophisticated enough to be a huge band. take Jae Laffer’s advise “Don’t Fight It”.

Brag Magazine - Album of the Week, Sydney
Cruel Guards
I couldn’t find words to describe how surprised I was when I heard this album. The Panics deserve fame, accolades and worship.

They have played shows in support of The Happy Mondays and played live on the BBC. The Panics show such potential, that the not too distant future could see them become a chief musical export of Australia. It seems certain that with sweeping strings emotional melodies and a sense of space and grandeur Cruel Guards could well be the album to propel The Panics into mainstream international success.

Gallant and beautiful the album is a perfect delicate balance of 60s Beatles epic, spaghetti western and Motown while remaining decided contemporary and alternative.

Jae Laffer’s drawling thick vocals and endearing modest while remaining suitably ethereal; ensuring the distinctive sound of The Panics will be instantly recognisable. Every track on Cruel Guards is gorgeous and to pick out some tracks over others would be to be denying the brilliance of this album. That being said “Don’t fight it” blew me away with its organ filled Motown melancholia.

The Australian (Ian Shedden)
Cruel Guards
It wouldn’t have been surprising to see Perth’s The Panics slip off the radar had they not come up with something fresh on their third album. Drinks all round then, since Cruel Guards is mightily pleasing to the ear while maintaining the basic understated guitar jangle and floating vocals of their two earlier albums and EPs. Two improvements are apparent. One is the production, by Scott Horsecroft, which concentrates on bringing out the poppier elements of the five piece band’s sounds. The other feature is a more commanding presence vocally and lyrically from frontman Jae Laffer. There are echoes of Dave McComb and the Church in Laffer’s Australiana and nasal whine, but more importantly he’s more of a presence, a focal point, here than before. There are several fantastic sings. The opening Get us Home, for example is a glorious merging of 60s pop strings and harmonies set against the Australian landscape, while the poppy mood is offset by the more melancholy title track and the closing Sundowner. Best of the lot, though, is Don’t Fight It, a horn driven pop classic that will surely usher The Panics into the big time.

Drum Media - Sydney (Ross Clelland)
Cruel Guards
In this immediate gratification era of music, to see The Panics build to the beauty of this seems somehow more natural and somewhat reassuring.
“Cruel Guards” is a rich and textured thing but even as the strings sometimes sweep in, the space and emptiness in it is never completely overwhelmed. This is a broader vision both musically and emotionally than their still engrossing previous album “Sleeps like a curse’. They admit the ambition of it; if not the shot at the big time, this is at least a shot.

From its at first tentative drum roll opening, which then gathers itself into the hopeful plea of “Get us Home”, they are coming at you from a dozen directions. One part Phil Spector 60s epic, some spaghetti western cross-currents and various combinations of guitar adding tones from alt. country to alt. pop all tumble out. And the instrumentation flows together seamlessly-it would be hard work to make it look so easy.
The same can be said of the perfectly titled single “Don’t fight it” – church organ overture to motown soul and brass as it unfolds; all built on a rolling old-tech rhythm loop. Or the exhausted relationship in “Ruins”, the tears falling into the sink you were never meant to find yourself chained to or counting the “Creaks” in the floorboards as you walk them alone.

However the distinctive sound that centres it all remains the enigmatic Jae Laffer, a voice of seemingly wiry tone that ranges across the album from Dylanesque drawl to something more ethereal. And then the drenched emotional numbness of the “Cruel Guards” themselves – anti depressants that have dulled some pain but take out some of the highs along with the lows. That this band can turn that darkness into truly affecting music, again suggests the confidence.
Along with the band, some thanks should go producers Scott Horsecroft who lets such distinctions flow but never quite fall into the dilettantism of one of his previous engagements, The Sleepy Jackson. Mixer Victor Van Gugt’s gives The Panics a link with names they’d respect, like Nick Cave, or fellow West Australians with a similar worldview, The Triffids.

Work your way into this glorious record and you will rightly consider it one of the year’s finest.

Sydney Morning Herald (Bernard Zuel)
Cruel Guards
The Panics are very very good. The opening track, Get us Home, has a string preamble that recalls The Beatles’ All I’ve got to do, verses like old-home week in Tennessee and a chorus threatening to soar like a classic piece of sunny joy. After that, as with The Church at their 80’s peak, The Perth band effortlessly sail through vauguely psychedelic pop gems that are outwardly casual but are actually quite intense, carry occasional brass and plain-speaking piano and are always big on melodies. Excellent Stuff!

RAVE Magazine (Matt Thrower)
Cruel Guards
For their third full-length album, The Panics continue to hone their craft as creators of sharply written, immaculately arranged melodies. An apparent immersion into Motown/Spector-styled pop informs some of the material here, with pianos and strings as prominent as guitars on the record. Frontman Jae Laffer delivers lyrics in which various stories and observations are drawn from a life growing up in Australia, though the swelling strings in Get Us Home, the shimmering guitar notes in Ruins and the infectious horn refrain in Don’t Fight It are grandiose and beautifully realised enough to touch the hearts of pop appreciators in any nation. For this listener, it actually took a couple of listens for the songs to sink in, but once the subtleties were absorbed, it was clear that this is some of the most graceful Australian rock this side of Augie March. The brooding, cavernous title track is more the ample evidence of that.

THE WEST AUSTRALIAN (Simon Collins)
Cruel Guards
Opening with a theatrical drum roll, “Get us home” , the first track from The Panics third album, channels the essence of a spaghetti western soundtrack so well you half expect to hear a whip crack, while the other tracks especially “Feeling is gone” and “Live Without”, take their cues closer to home, specifically The Triffids and The Go-Betweens.

The later comparison is especially resonant because of front man Jae Laffer’s songwriting, which has evolved to deliver highly evocative vignettes of which messrs McComb, McLennan and Foster would be proud.

Another song bearing Ennio Morricone flourishes, “Something in the Garden” is almost gothic, while The Verve like pop gospel of first single “Don’t fight it” is the clearest display of the Perth bands fearlessness.

The Panics have pulled back some of their trade mark glistening layers to reveal the strongest elements of each song, whether they be a string melody or Laffer’s lyrics. Brimming with confidence and backed by the formidable label in Dew Process, The Panics could be the home grown success story of 2007. They certainly deserve to be.

FASTERLOUDER
Cruel Guards
For every band that manages to successfully mature it’s sound over the course of a career, there’s at least two that take their sound in dire directions, and at least a dozen that just don’t change their sound at all, and fade into obscurity. Such a fate is not for The Panics, whose new album Cruel Guards sees them develop their unique brand of low-key rock into a bigger, more expansive sound, and signals their arrival as truly great Australian band.

The Panics don’t waste any time introducing their new sound either. Opening track Get Us Home begins with a staccato drum roll, before a giant orchestral sound crashes into place. Once the lyrics begin, the old Panics sound shines through, with acoustic and electric guitars complementing each other perfectly to create a shimmering Western vibe.

Don’t Fight It, the first single to be released from the album, is an absolute cracker, with a slow organ opening underpinning frontman Jay Laffer’s trademark vocals, before a piano and horns section gives the song weight and bombast. A brilliant singalong chorus about seizing the unknown means this is probably the Panics’ best ever shot at a hit single.

But even when they try something different, this still the same Panics who wowed critics and audiences with their first two albums, A House On A Street In A Town I’m From and Sleeps Like A Curse. Panics fans looking for a bit of the old sound will find it in Ruins, Creak, and Feeling Is Gone, with the interplay between the pianos, guitars and vocals creating layered songs with a depth that few other artists can match. Ruins is particular mesmerising, as a break-up song which will leave listeners supporting the break, rather than with any sense of pity for the protagonist.

Title track Cruel Guards slows the tempo a little, but some beautiful harmonisation and piano work make this a song that will stick in your head. Live Without ramps the energy back up again with a marching drum beat and handclaps alongside the excellent piano and guitar work. And album closer Sundowner uses a beautiful piano line and guitar lick to bolster Laffer’s vocals – this is probably the first time Laffer has given himself a cocky swagger, and it works beautifully.

It’s impossible to single out any one of the band members as making the biggest contribution to this album. All five musicians have contributed superb work to create an album that feels like a living document, a testament to a band which is continuing to grow and thrive. These songs are complex and layered without ever feeling pretentious, which is perhaps a testament to the simple, honest lyrics, which lovingly lay out tales of heartbreak and cherish with equal aplomb.

One thing is clear: the Panics didn’t to just release another Panics record. By taking their sound in a natural direction, rather than forcing change on themselves, they have created an album which has instant appeal, but will also grow on the listener with each subsequent listen. Cruel Guards is a stunning album which should find a place in any music listener’s collection, and is definitely a contender for album of the year.

ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE (DANIEL FINDLEY)
Cruel Guards
Opening with strings straight out of an Ennio Morricone score, “Cruel Guards” announces a change of pace for The Panics. The Five Piece have consistently delivered beautiful spare rock throughout their career, but with the lush pianos, strings and layered guitars of this their third full length album, they’ve beefed up their production without sounding overblown.

“Don’t fight it” is resplendent with hooky trumpets, while the harmonica laced title track see front man jae laffer affirm his place as a deft, poetic lyricist. Consistent throughout, “Cruel Guards” straddles the divide between pop and rock with arrangements that reflect the 12 months spent shaping the set.

During closer ‘Sundowner”, complete with swelling strings, Laffer lets us know he “spent six months looking for the rest of the rhyme”, a labour that has paid off in full.

The Panics have an impressive back catalogue well worth investigating, but for their best, most cohesive work, look no further than this record.

Richard Kingsmill (triple J Music Director & Presenter 2005)
Sleeps Like A Curse
My absolute anthem of 2005! love every moment and I'm pretty confident that I know the whole album word for word.

Kirileigh Lynch (Library Spice, triple J's Assistant Music Director)
Sleeps Like A Curse
Every time I listen to this album it makes me feel like I'm dreaming the most beautiful dreams while being wide awake.

Illegal Del (Today Today Producer Triple J )
Sleeps Like A Curse
This is the best Australian album of the year.

Craig Mathieson
Craig Mathieson discovers how a siege mentality inspired the latest album of a growing Australian band.

JAE LAFFER, vocalist for Perth five-piece the Panics, is sitting in a Byron Bay park. It's his 24th birthday and nearby a local is lazily tapping out a rhythm on bongo drums.

The previous night his band played Coolangatta and in a few hours they will move on again, heading for Tamworth , but in the meantime he has a day off, the ocean's azure waves beckon and he even has enough money to cover the rent of a home he won't see for the next month.

"You just have to stop sometimes and go, 'This is a really good life'," Laffer says.

"I guess I would have been very happy as a kid if I knew that by the time I was 24 I'd have released a couple of albums and been on the radio and played some good gigs."

Situated in the vicinity of Grant McLennan's (Go-Betweens) urban vignettes and Augie March's hushed solemnity, the Panics are in the midst of a national tour to promote their second album, Sleeps Like a Curse .

Tinged with elements of burnished West Coast pop, the album has an assured, intimate tone, as if it came together without forethought or effort.

"I think we're getting closer and closer to something," Laffer says.

"We're entering a phase now where our best stuff is just around the corner - we could go anywhere from here. All our best records are ahead of us."

Sleeps Like a Curse is the record that distances Laffer from Perth , where he was raised in the hills just outside the city and shaped by the music of Tim Rogers from You Am I and the Polish expatriate community his mother was a part of.

Much of it was written during a six-week trip to Britain, where in between a London show supporting a reformed Happy Mondays and playing a music industry showcase in Manchester, the band holed up at a fortified rehearsal room in the northern city.

"People think you're exaggerating to sound rock'n'roll but the truth of the matter is that muggings are commonplace and that if you don't bolt the door of your room with some iron bars, people will come and take all your stuff," he says.

"We're just skinny boys from Perth but this intense existence made us lock ourselves in that room and just play music. It was good to do that."

Since then Laffer, along with some of his bandmates, has been living in North Melbourne , dealing with the winter chill and exploring the city's live music culture.

Already he's working on the Panics' third disc, intent on influencing the songs with new surroundings.

"All I know is that if you spend some time in one spot, you actually get the best perspective on it when you're somewhere else," Laffer says.

"I like to meet people and see new places, that's when ideas come to you about where you've already been."

Laffer is a level-headed dreamer. As a child he would spend hours contemplating the band posters on the wall of his bedroom and planning what to wear on tour.

As an adult he's retained a sense of that freedom to re-imagine himself even as the Panics have steadily become an independent success story, moving into larger venues and almost stealthily expanding their fan base.

He can discuss their financial astuteness and teeming schedule if required but he speaks of it more as a witness than an instigator. Ultimately, Laffer is concerned with something grander and enduring.

"The only thing that people will ultimately remember," he says, "is great records."

Hotpress Sydney
SLEEPS LIKE A CURSE
This album opens with Disney inspired strings. Baring more than a passing resemblance to The Sleepy Jackson, this album proves that The Panics have stopped releasing merely “Great” albums and are now a world force.

Inpress Melbourne
Sleeps Like A Curse
Hi Fi Bar Melbourne gig review

I wasn’t prepared for the mightiness of this live performance. These boys and their songs do the live thing very, very well.

…The smile grew particularly through watching the very entertaining cartoon ness of guitarist Drew Wootton and I love the man who can play guitar and keys at damn near simultaneously bin Julian Douglas. “Twin sisters” was grand, as was “Sleeps like a curse”, “My best mistake”, “Minor A” and “Speak it”. I love the endearing awkwardness of bassist Paul Otway and the relentless look of concentration from Myles Wootton on drums. Jae laffer’s professionalism anchored the group, his voice, keys and guitar near fault less….the lads on stage seemed genuinely chuffed and slightly bemused at the large crowd who had yes come to see what they could do…The Panics are good, Very good.

Sydney Morning Herald
Sleeps Like A Curse
“The Panics whip up some gorgeous melodies”

While everyone else is either ploughing the crunching “new rock” or nervy “post punk”, The Panics return with their minds on calmer pursuits that don’t need inverted commas around them.

For The Panics, this means an album that comes with its own heat haze. “Sleeps Like A Curse” feels like early an evening in summer when can still feel the warmth coming off the ground as you lie on the couch on the veranda. Jae Laffer’s vocals have both a hint of huskiness and shot of drawl, coming across like gentle spin off of Machine Translations’ J Walker, The Go-Betweens Grant McLennen and The Church’s Steve Kilby.

Musically, that’s pretty much where The Panics fit in too; country and whispers of psychedelia laid over melodies you could pour from a jug.

“Twin Sisters” and “One Too Many Itches” are simply gorgeous. “Sleeps Like A Curse” and “Speak It” should accompany classic surf footage. “Minor A” shade the day with sadness.

Herald Sun Melbourne
Sleeps Like A Curse
Perth band The Panics think Big. “Curse’s” opener “One too many itches” is a jaw dropper, starting like a bruised folk tune before becoming a dramatic psychedelic lullaby.

It’s a great introduction. Forget recycled riff rock The panics are more inspired by the Church-singer Jae Laffer has that mysterious twinge to his voice that Steve Kilby uses to great effect-and their hero Johnny Cash.

Aside from the heavy Cashisms, wide screen ballad “Someone somewhere somehow” is hauntingly beautiful, and harmony soaked 60s pop (“Its not a thing”) and epic ballads(“Keep an eye on me”) add to a mighty moody album.

Xpress Magazine
Sleeps Like A Curse
Album number 2 for the Panics lives up to the impossible promise that has hung over their head for nearly their entire career. Each song on sleeps like a curse stands out as being strong enough to release as a single-a feat accomplished on very few albums. Not since Ian Brown first opted for his own now trademark whisper have subdued vocals sounded so powerful, and as if it were almost based on the same principle, the overall mellowness of sleeps like a curse is the source of its strength. The Panics have finally found what they were looking for all along, The bar has been raised impossibly high, nothing can touch this album. It is without exaggeration essential listening.

Drum Media Sydney
Sleeps Like A Curse
There are some albums where you now from the opening notes that the band has got it right, that all elements to a band becoming something individual of quality have fallen into place, and the result is potentially something special.

The almost caroling bells that overture “One too many itches” conjure a bunch of ghosts of pop past and present-a hint of spector Christmas album and hint of Brian Wilson sweep before Jae Laffer’s oddly engaging and feeling vocals come in confessing of “a last card to play”, when truth is theres a quite a few aces up the sleeve as it all unfolds.

The title track then shuffles in, a night train from the west pulling into central with Laffers doubts coming echoing back in his voice ‘at age thirteen”. There is a slight country undertow through much of the album some Johnny Cash Americana and Dylan wordsmithing cutcross with some of those sweet classic 60s pop influences. “Its not a thing” overflows with Bryds ringing guitars, though the band themselves naecheck the Church as a reference. The aforementioned Beach Boys harmonise through many choruses and overall there’s a neat balancing of the epic and the intimate. “Like an unwelcome guest adds the local heat haze with imagery of sprinklers and hills hoists which bring comparisons for me with the Triffids distinctly Perth world view with a distance provided by the band seeing the country from a Manchester eyrie where the holed up first developing these songs.

Then there’s their stately piano driven near hymnals. “Minor A” is a slow drawing of breath. “Someone somewhere somehow” is a broken love letter and court summons at once. “The general calling adds an almost threatening guitar line to a rising clenched insecurity in the lyrics.

Overall it’s a supremely assured album from a band which has found its voice. Stunningly good, one of the years best.

Time Off Magazine
Sleeps Like A Curse
Amazingly, this is the sixth release from Perth outfit The Panics in just two-and-a-half years. But despite their intense release schedule, they continue to produce work of a high standard.

Second album Sleeps Like A Curse sees the band spread their wings and follow a slightly different path. Previously rooted in northern English guitar atmospherics (The Verve, Stone Roses etc), The Panics have recently introduced slide guitar, finger-picking and folky phrasing to the fold.

The swirling guitars are still evident, but there’s more restraint applied now and, it appears, less focus on building grand soundscapes. Consequently, Jae Laffer’s lyrics are given more room to shine as his breathy vocals now blend less into the surrounding music.

The real treats arrive in ‘Like An Unwelcome Guest’, album opener ‘One Too Many Itches’ and moody ‘Keep An Eye On You’ with its ominous piano. Meanwhile, the hand-clapping ‘Twin Sisters’ is positively upbeat.

Sleeps Like A Curse is the album The Panics needed to make; they’ve proved they’re capable of straddling styles and pushing their own limits. But really, we never had any reason to doubt them…

The West Australian
Sleeps Like A Curse
Two years from their debut album “A house on a street in a town I’m from” . Perth’s morose minstals return with their strongest batch of songs yet.

Last years seven track “Crack in the wall” signaled that The Panics were pushing away from Manchester sounds into more diverse territory, populated by the likes of Johnny Cash, The Bryds, The Go-Betweens and The Triffids.

Previous releases have taken time to grow on the listener. Four tracks from “sleeps like a curse” – specifically “My best mistake” “Twin sisters” “Speak it” and “It’s not a thing”- deliver such winning melodies that they immediately take up residence in your grey bungalow.

The rest soon follow, from the half spoken opener “One too many itches” to the foreboding “The general calling” (inspired by Cash’s The man conme around perhaps) and melancholy closer “Keep an eye on me”

Meloncholy is a word often associated with Laffer’s evocative lyrics and appropriate for much of “Sleeps like a curse’. However there’s plenty of sunshine on this at time blinding album.

For example the 60s poip celebration of summer loving “It’s not a thing” contains the fab line “we sit on beaches, drink like leaches/the only kiss I gets from the sun”.

Glistening layers of guitars and keyboards, sneaky rhythms and Laffers deadpan vocals embellished by strings and glockenspiel combine to make “sleeps like a curse” a great Perth album…wait nix that…a great Australian album.

Butterbox Media
The Panics - @ Newtown.Sydney Friday 18 February 2005.
The Panics opened their set with the song Southern, taken from the mini album Crack in the Wall. Recorded in brief and spontaneous circumstances it’s one of those records that preclude discussions about relativity or conceptual art simply because it possesses symptoms of aggression, scruffiness and calculated cool without any of the strictly-for-display, glossy magazine play-acting regularly found on Special Needs TV shows. In the album’s seven songs glimpses of intricate illusion are found specific to romantic emotion.

Appearance-wise The Panics look and act as if they’d reject any script from the franchise-hungry money people on the grounds of optimism. There’s enough haughtiness in front man Jae Laffer’s outer shell to enhance his broad musical sweeps and the combination serves to annihilate mediocrity.

The remaining songs showed The Panics’ sound to have evolved quite markedly since Crack in the Wall. It’s still all shimmering chorused guitars and low-register depression tinged vocals, but its effortlessness is standout tonight, a legacy, no doubt, of constant touring and their recent northern hemisphere exposure.

Guitarist Drew Wootton’s string squeezing Tele-tones create all manner of oblique references from screaming noise to delicate offbeat arpeggios. Crowned by the assertive melodies of Jae Laffer, and underscored by a noodling synthesiser and roaring cymbals the combination blends uncommonly well and creates a vast dimension of atmospherics that radiate triumphantly from the stage.

Launching into Lost in Green Eyes the appreciation from the audience reaches fever pitch. The song’s slightly disturbing lyrics welded onto a semi-commercial pop tune gains a reception more commonly associated with boy bands. This is a wonderful achievement for music in general and crammed down the front for prime sing-a-long positions people, who under normal circumstances look as if they’d never buy an indie release, are asking one another if they owned, “The first album” (A House on a Street in a Town I’m From – Ed.) and probably would’ve sung parts of tonight’s set on their way home from the gig tonight.

Compressed into the songs was an authentic integration that cut right through to the heart of their work. One that allowed the sound to snap from eccentric throwaway phrasing to sheer passion in the next breath with a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe. Ideas of hollow, sheer tension nudged the sound along unobtrusively and were fuelled by aural and mental glimpses of an illumination made all the more believable because the whiff of decadence was within reach and everlasting.

Machine has no Agenda
Crack in the Wall
The opening (instrumental) track on The Panics latest record “Crack In The Wall” lays down an epic desert-revenge vibe full of chewed toothpicks and squinting eyes on horseback. The introductory thump of drums is compressed to the point of implosion, but is soon released with an expanse of reverb, harmonica, and a guitar that slowly picks notes like a bored vulture from the spare bones of the instrument.It is a brilliant opening, and it does establish the tone of this EP.

Cash lays down a similarly threatening tarmac as the Doors' Riders On the Storm, sharing similarly spooksy electric piano embellishments. It has an awesome momentum and a dynamic arrangement that navigates effortlessly from desperate shreddings of distortion to acoustically accompanied harmonica. From here, things mellow out considerably, but this being The Panics, that's a good thing. Not that their more energetic side doesn't have the same force - they are probably the most versatile and consistent lesser-known band in Australia at the moment, and it surprises me they aren't at least as big as ... I don't know, Delta Goodrem?

In Your Head and Like an Aching Lung are the sort of tender, melancholy ballads that powerfully demonstrate the sincerity of the Panics' and their sensitivity, as a band, to the ideas and needs behind each song. They seem to simply be adequate ballads, full of beautifully turned lyrical phrases such as:

"I've seen your face
Like some dim lit plane
But you make me shake
Like some country train"

But then the drums will step out of the darkness, lifting the songs on their shoulders, and allowing us a more impressive perspective from which to explore them. It is the subtle embellishments and instrumentation, the creativity of production, and the sophistication of arrangements that will ensure a long and fruitful output from The Panics. They have such a command of their own atmospheric conditions that paranoid schizophrenics will now have new suspects in their lists of Peoples Who Control the Weather.

Before the record concludes (with the fly-around-the-light-globe depression of Crack In The Wall) we are treated to an intermission of Pop - just when you're starting to forget that, yes, The Panics play pop music, they brighten up at the edges for the melodic, breezy Lost In Green Eyes.

These songs have the beguiling, open sadness that allows you to invest your own emotional meaning into them. And being the great songs that they are, beware - 'cos repeated listenings will probably provoke an extended bout of nostalgia and reminiscence. Just remember one thing - you are not Clint Eastwood, and this is not a movie.

Americana UK
The Panics “This Day Last Year”
When you hear the phrase “melodic, moody experimental guitar pop” it’s difficult to avoid slipping into that “been there, done that” state of mind all too easily, but the debut mini-album (bigger than an EP, smaller than an album!) by Australia’s Panics really is as good as it gets for this overpopulated genre, rising above the run of the mill and shining with sparkling production value, well placed innovative edges and most of all good, straight down the line guitar based pop songs. It’s actually a shorter album than might otherwise appear, as even weighing in at eight tracks, almost half of those are instrumental links a la Baby Bird style from one track proper to the next - but what tracks they are. From the Charlatans vibe of the opening title track, to the Sparklehorse style harmonies of “Give Me Some Good Luck,” the Panics manage to create an antipodean West Coast sound all of their own, harking back to our own golden days of Britpop but with the timelessness of songs not caught up in a passing movement. Hey, two of the band members’ father (Drew and Myles Wooton) was the original drummer in AC/DC to boot! Difficult to adequately describe, but you don’t hear new releases this exciting very often. Go buy. MW

James Jupp, The English in Australia, Cambridge University Press, 2004
The Panics are an extraordinary band born in Perth but destined to be famous elsewhere. Expansively creative, they fill out the extremities of the musical landscape. Their album A house on a street in the town I'm from, pastiches many times and places. The Panics pluck around the last fifty years of guitar-based music, gliding effortlessly from the 1960s to the 1980s, and on to the 2000s. Their most important influence is the legendary Manchester band The Stone Roses, who created new sonic vocabularies and visual languages. The Roses released two extraordinary albums — a self titled first release and The Second Coming — that were separated by five years. But the musical trajectory of these two albums has been punctuated over a decade later by The Panics. It is no surprise that A house not only sounds like the 'great' second album that The Stone Roses never recorded but that it emerged from the most isolated Australian city.

Drum Media - Sydney.
Twin Sisters
Oh dear god. It's beautiful. They've been building to this. Throw in the cardboard box drums, handclaps and slightly Doorsy organ towards the end and this is close to rating with The Go Betweens and The Triffids as an Australian document. Yes, it's that good.

Groove magazine.
Crack in the Wall
It’s exquisite; nothing we can say could convey just how much we love this offering. Complete with the holy grail of songwriting, lyrics of substance written in simple but beautiful language. This is a work of great emotional depth and subtlety, a treasure that demands repeated listening. A serious contender for record of the year.

The Weekend Australian.
Crack in the Wall
".there's a freshness and a contemplative beauty that belies easy categorisation. Songs such as "like an aching lung" surge to life like moisture from a hidden spring, all purity and earthy warmth driven by simple guitar and Jae Laffers richly lurching voice. Like fellow Perth visionaries The Triffids, the Panics ground their sound in mood and drama, relying on the power of great songwriting and unadorned arrangements"

The West Australian
Crack in the Wall
"Take several listens to unlock these melancholy treasures - wallow in them at the end of another wasted weekend"

City Life Manchester UK May 2003
A House on a Street in a Town I'm From
“The Panics bang out pop genius whilst maintaining a laid back but totally refreshing modern guitar sound – They sound like the Byrds bumming about on a beach with the Doves”

Drowned in Sound(UK)
A House on a Street in a Town I'm From
" Fortunately, the days when the words 'Australia's' and 'music scene' were linked together in the same sentence by the names Angry Anderson and Rolf Harris are well and truly behind us, and whether or not you like the Vines and Jet, no one can argue that for the time being at least the home of cricket, Harold and Madge, and lager that tastes like stewed compost has finally achieved some form of credibility in terms of musical achievement.

You can now add The Panics to that list, a five piece who've obviously been reared on a similar diet to that of fellow compatriots The Sleepy Jackson, but whereas the latter have suffered the inevitable backlash and disharmony amongst their ranks thanks to an unprecedented level of hype, The Panics have been able to develop their own sound away from the glare of the.

Vocalist Joe Laffer sounds like a teenage Marc Bolan before he discovered the joys of bourbon whisky and non-prescription drugs, or even Bowie around the time of 'Aladdin Sane', years before the mid-life crisis started to set in.

The title track could even be T-Rex covering Crowded House's 'Weather With You' in a parallel universe, while 'Give Me Some Good Luck' contains an eerie whiff of 'I Am The Resurrection' in its opening chords, before cruising into Byrds-y 'Turn Turn Turn' territory.

Not that The Panics come across as copyists. Far from it in fact, and in guitarist Drew Wooton, they may have found a deserved successor to John Squire in perfecting the art of textured six-stringed savvy.

It's also worth noting that at no point during the 29 minutes of this album do The Panics make any reference to garage rock, Nirvana or AC/DC (despite two of the band being the sons of their original drummer) and for that achievement alone they have surely earned the right to sit proudly alongside their heroes on anybody's CD rack.

Francis Leach JJJ/Radio National
".. I've been a big fan ever since I heard the first Panics EP and I've got to say they have exceeded even my unreasonable expectations"