Album captures the untamed fire of Panther Burns By Walter Dawson — The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Sunday, October 25, 1981

   Panther Burns explore the freedom inherent in rockabilly as well as any band since the '50s, when that musical form first swirled across the South. In addition, the band pushes that freedom to the edge of esthetic limits, creating music that seems to exist outside usual pop structures.
   That has been obvious for some time at club performance in Memphis. Live, the group's frenetic revamping of blues and rockabilly with punk values has coalesced into a fever-inducting construction that creates as much as it destroys as old themes are shaken apart and reshaped.

   Whether that can be maintained on vinyl is a question raised with the upcoming release of Panther Burns' first album. The group last year released an EP on its own Frenzi label, but those cuts were live, retaining a large measure of the tensions performing live gives to rock and roll.
   The album, Behind the Magnolia Curtains, is due out this week on the Frenzi label through Rough Trade, one of the more solid of the new music record companies. The album also is being released in England with a live single not scheduled for American issue.
Panther Burns purposely stays one step removed from being good, and so it is with the album. The flaws and misguided directions are necessary to the band's "punkabilly" as the music, but here those flaws occasionally are to glaring.
   In concert, the feedback and the rhythmic disasters and the vocals that don't even try are integral but not needed (nor welcome) on the surface, where they can become separated from the texture.
   Still, the album holds together, delivering a message of salvation by destruction. The material is well picked - from Leadbelly's "Bourgeois Blues" to Handy's "St.Louis Blues" to the rockabilly of "You're Undecided" and "She's the One that's got it" - and all 13 songs give the feeling of relinquished control.

   LAST WEEK, before the band left Friday in tour, Tav Falco, the group's ubiquitous lead singer, talked about the group position.
   "I like for Panther Burns to be, at its best, kind of 'every man for himself' when you get out there and start playing… I'd rather it not get to where the bassman has his part and he knows it and he's got a little groove he's supposed to crank out."
   Thus, a Panther Burns performance is unlikely to be the same twice, one reason the band cut its album so quickly.
   "Most of the takes are one-take," Falco said. "We didn't do any real mixing, and of course, there were no overdubs. We went into Ardent, and we recorded all the tracks in two afternoons of three-hour sessions. A couple of the tunes we did two takes of, but usually there was just no stopping.
   The cast assembled to handle that free expression gets a little confusing because the band's membership, like the music, appears to use flux as a normal condition.
   The album was recorded with L X Chilton (the former Alex Chilton), who had been said to have left the band. Falco said that's right and wrong. "Alex is still with Panther Burns but not in a performance capacity right now - although he might be soon … He's taking a vacation for a while."
   In another personnel confusion, the album was cut without longtime drummer Ross Johnson, who is, Falco said, still with the band and on the English single. It seems the album was cut when Johnson was semi-retired from the band. And Johnson won't be making the upcoming tour because his day gig keeps him here. For the tour, the band has enlisted the help of Jim Sclavunos of New York, formerly with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.

   LESS CONFUSING are the roles of guitarist Jim Duckworth and bass player Ron Miller, a former jazz and symphony bassist.
   The tour will take the band to Tucson, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles, where they will play Halloween with the Cramps. Some other dates are being talked about, and if that comes up, the group should be back from the road by late November.
   At any rate, its next Memphis appearance is scheduled at the Antenna Club, Dec. 11.

By Walter Dawson

The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Sunday, October 25, 1981
[taken from Fast Fuse]

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