The band Trash Panda began in 2015 as the recording project of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Taylor, gradually turning into a band. They have released some albums and average more than 100,000 streams on Spotify each month, but this album is just Patrick (who is also known as Lazuli Vane), recorded in a barn nestled in the mountains near Burnsville, NC, following a decade marred by self-sabotage, health crises, and heartbreak. It is not a Trash Panda album, but it says Trash Panda on the cover, while his name is missing and I have seen this listed for sale against both the names he uses, as well as the band.
What we have here is delicate Americana, self-reflective, almost melancholic at times, and I can understand why Patrick sat on the finished result for a year as he felt it was perhaps too personal to ever make public. While acoustic guitar and his vocals are always the centra focus, there are plenty of other instruments, and the lack of percussion makes for a release which is full of space so each one of them really shines. There is some lovely woodwind at different places, which sounds real as opposed to synthesised and in many ways, this is one of the timeless albums which draw in the listener and transports them to somewhere else. It does need to be played on headphones, as this is a quiet album which could be lost in the noise and hubbub of the modern world as this belongs mostly to a time gone by.
According to Taylor, the inspiration for the songs came from a surreal experience in which he imagined a woman rising from a pool of seafoam in the barn where the recording took place. Her speech left him stunned, and the attempt to recall her words transformed into the eleven songs that make up ‘Appalachian Seafoam’. I don’t know how much truth there is in that tale, but it is certainly intriguing and adds to the ambience of what is a delightful, personal and in many ways delicate piece of work. If you enjoy Americana this is essential.
Rating: 8/10
