Since their 2010 debut, Together Pangea, the Los Angeles trio behind songs like “Blood, Blood, Blood,” “Shitty,” and “Sick Shit,” have been heralded among their Southern California peers for blazing, surfy garage punk. Known for crude lyrics, boozy gigs, and tours supporting established rockers Alkaline Trio and Twin Peaks, the group arrived at a sweet spot on their most recent album, 2017’s striking rock’n’roll bruiser Bulls and Roosters. Rather than release a full-length follow-up, they opted to split a February 2018 recording session into three disparate EPs: the acoustic Sleeping Til Sunset, last October’s tizzied Non Stop Paranoia, and the milder Dispassionate.
The pleasant reworkings of older songs on Sleeping Til Sunset successfully highlighted Together Pangea’s mellower side, so it’s not as if the band loses all their appeal when they set aside their usual lawlessness. But in contrast to the full-bodied Bulls and Roosters, 2014’s fervent Badillac, and even the gaudy synths of Non Stop Paranoia, Dispassionate feels watered-down. Its retro influence sounds less like the work of Burger Records alumni and more like a squeaky-clean throwback to “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Opener “Bet You Wish I Would Call” is inspired by the real-life unreachability of frontman William Keegan, who went phoneless for years. His razor-sharp riffs carry the song, but they’re bogged down by cliches like “Summer days are meant to sleep ’em away” and “Listening to all my favorite songs,” Together Pangea’s own best crack at Bruno Mars’ “The Lazy Song.” The beachy “Never Said I Wanna” offers a seed of thematic development, but lines like, “Time is ash boy, I was 21/Crossing a great divide, trying to follow the one/It’s in the past boy, like a dying sun,” wind up more muddied than profound.
The EP’s title track is simultaneously its most glum and most kinetic, kicking off with a twee xylophone ditty before the lyrics lurch toward oblivion. “It’s Monday, vodka and cigarettes again/I’ve hell to pay, I’ll be inside this week,” Keegan sings, belting the word “dispassionate” a few times. It’s a recurring habit: Three of Dispassionate’s four songs make heavy use of their respective titles in the chorus. With so little substance elsewhere, it feels like a crutch.
“Moonlight Lately” brings the most muscle, as drummer Erik Jimenez saunters through flourishes that rattle with the gusto of Spanish folklorico. The lyrics detail a violent crash: “The screeching of tires, the burning of rubber/The breaking of glass, and the witness, my brother/That's when my baby hit the ground!” With a blown-out saxophone solo taking over halfway through, it feels like Together Pangea’s take on an ’80s action-drama soundtrack, and it’s the song most closely in line with the band’s traditionally reckless ethos.
Though Together Pangea are capable musicians and songwriters, Dispassionate succumbs to its own sense of anhedonia. The band attempts to mask the anonymity with their tried-and-true rumbling drums and animated guitars, but this time, their edge can’t cut it.
