From the archives: Originally posted May 2025
Nostalgia
A few days ago, Pat James played at an open mic I was attending. He told of how the pandemic sparked a withdrawal from performing that lingered beyond the lockdown. He found himself submerged, sinking beneath the waters of his isolation. And so he started naming all his monsters.
But here’s the thing: Pat is himself a beast of a musician. His voice has a preternatural power. Even his calm is a portend of a subterranean force seeking release. Today, he has released his new monster single “Old Roads”. What he’s really releasing is the Kraken.
Drummer Jeff Cox opens the track with what becomes the song’s central metaphor: the clock is ticking at what feels like a breakneck speed; the power chords that chime in to the build are “pushed” before the verse drops. The continuities of time and memory, the vignettes of the pizza shop his family owned, the fairgrounds he played in with friends, are fragmented, and this is the primary tension driving the chorus: these places of his childhood years, which formed an identity based on family and friends, are indelibly altered by the ravages of time and change, and the loss of these places of the past reflect a sense of lost identity as he seeks to anchor himself in the overwhelming pace of the present.
Everything is changing
Turning into dust…
How much more can I take
How much more has to change
Before it’s not even where I come from
And I hold on inside
While pieces of me die
All along
These old roads
And so, we meet the Kraken. The tension releases into the fury and fire of John Gould’s blistering solo, fuelled by the unbridled, concussive force of Jeff Cox and Mat Power, and Jesse Karwat’s soulful B3. Pat’s voice reverberates over it all.
To me, this song feels emergent, an aggressive expression of a new and vigorous monster no longer willing to submit to its chains. This first early release heralds his new album, coming this spring, should spring ever come. I can’t wait to hear this beast unleashed live.
-Jack Hammond
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