I arrived a little late at the Echo on Tuesday night, actually the show had started earlier then usual, and I missed the beginning of Pan Am’s set, but the quartet had already drawn the attention of many with their uplifting tunes which had a sort of nostalgia for the 60s. And I am not necessarily saying this because the guitars in ‘He called himself Dan’ echoed some of the catchiness of a certain McCartney song (‘Rocky Racoon?), but there was a real and pleasant retro side in their music.
Seeing the scarce information found online, Pan Am has to be a very young band, consisting of two brothers, Steven Lundy on vocals and guitar, and Gary Lundy on lead guitar, as well as Dan Attanasio on bass, and someone else on drums. If there was no surprise to read on their facebook page that their influences are The Beatles, Oasis, and The Kinks, rehashing the 60s is never easy at the risk of sounding ridiculous and outdated.
But there was none of this on Tuesday night, and if the doo-wop sound of the 60s was quite present during ‘My my my’, or the bright chorus of ‘Save me’ was following some the same path than Portugal. The Man, another heavily Beatles-influenced band, during the explosive ‘Domino’ I immediately thought about a younger band, Saint Motel.
Pan Am didn’t even close the set with one of their songs, but with a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’,… so much for glam rock.