Stream: Paw City, ‘The Catalyst’

0

pawcity2

Those familiar with Michael Orendy’s rapturous albums as Frankel may have been surprised two years ago when he unveiled Paw City, the new electro-rock project undertaken with his wife (and member of Earlimart) Ariana Murray. The first Paw City EP, released in June 2013, straddled the line between catchy and wonky (think: Grandaddy), and now a long-in-the-works second EP, “Panic Test,” will be out Sept. 9. Recently remastered and renamed after a brief release to Bandcamp earlier this year, “Panic Test” again finds the band bending notes and toying with expectations; the raging synths on “Count Me In” sound like pumped-up Rentals; the loud-soft dynamic of “Someday I’ll Feel” and “Spiral Eyes” suggest both are two songs packed into one; and “The Catalyst” is a darned-near-ready-for-five-remixes dance-floor number. All that’s missing is reckless use of vocoder, and for goodness’ sake, let’s hope it stays missing.

||| Stream: “The Catalyst”