By Phillipe Roberts
Guitar-backed meditations on insignificance tend to accumulate in locations with a little bit of breathing room–where folks live close enough to taste forest-cleansed air, feel the spray of the ocean, or gaze out into the eerie desert night with a sense of wonder and enough wisdom to quench your ego before the majesty of “empty” space. Perhaps it’s the daily grind of charming and clawing your way to the top in the urban world, or the grandiose monuments to human exceptionalism that cities pretend to be, but within these walls, it’s be big or go home.
Well light pollution be damned; Queens’ Panther Hollow are out here, squinting through a telescope for a taste of that sweet, sweet insignificance on their track “Atoms in the Universe.” The opening and title track for an EP released a year ago today, the song balances gentle folk finger-picking and phaser-enhanced psychedelic rock bombast as it tumbles through a window-gazing reverie into a more innocent time “when we were atoms in the universe / falling down.” Led by Bernardo Ochoa’s telephone-effected vocals and meandering guitar, Panther Hollow paints an ambiguous scene that manages to feel immediately emotionally familiar. From the gentle romance of “when you're right beside me, no one contains us / but our clothes” to the dorm-room psychedelic come-down poetry that “your room is an island / where we are stranded” calls to mind (maybe just mine?), Panther Hollow comes equipped with the lyrical artillery to match their own formidable instrumental fireworks.
The song premieres today on ThrdCoast with a brand new music video. The brilliantly salvaged remains of an animation project, the melted studio playthrough of the song shows off the constellation of collaborations behind Panther Hollow. “This whole process definitely took longer than I intended,” explains Ochoa. “At the time I was planning on organizing a visual EP, and I initially wanted to animate all four songs. But after we released the audio in February, I realized that publishing and moving on was more important to me than finalizing my initial vision. So what's left is these amazing videos shot by Camille Petricola and animated by Joyce Zhao and Dan Criblez. It wasn't what I thought it would be when I first started conceptualizing the EP, but I'm super happy with the work that came out of it.”
Stream the full Atoms in the Universe EP at the band’s Bandcamp page.