Pan Arcadia Talk Songwriting, Their New Single, and Headlining at Le Poisson Rouge

Photo courtesy of Kayla Hogan.

Pan Arcadia is an NYC-based band currently making waves in the rock scene; largely reminiscent of the early 2000s music circuit, the group is best known for their bright guitar and captivating vocals. Last Friday was their biggest performance to date, and Emma, OTR’s managing editor, and I had the opportunity to sit down with them before the show to talk about the songwriting process, performing at Le Poisson Rouge, and their new single, “Into the Glass.”

Prior to that night I'd never seen the band live, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect; watching them after interviewing them was mystifying. Sitting in the green room, the guys are unusually calm (considering they’ve just come from soundcheck), but on stage they transform, enveloped in strobe lights like fluorescent halos. What does carry over to the performance is the ease with which they interact – whether it’s the effortless way they play off of each other in conversation or their chaotic bouncing around stage, the band’s chemistry is tangible. Bec Lauder, with her siren-like magnetism, is a fantastic addition at the end of the set, alluring alto blending seamlessly with frontman Eamon Rush’s deep bass.

Afterwards, people are singing their praises all the way down Bleecker Street. The person walking ahead of me, who had also never seen them before, tells her friend, “you’ve created a monster by taking me here, because that was fucking incredible.” Another proclaims that we “haven’t seen indie rock like that since the 2004.” Evidently, the verdict is in: Pan Arcadia is a force to be reckoned with.

We could just start with a quick history – how this started, how you guys met, that kind of thing.

EAMON: I met Dylan (guitar)  in middle school, and then I met Henry (bass) in high school – we played basketball together. Dylan kind of played guitar, Henry didn’t play anything, so I convinced him to join the band and we met Gabe (guitar) along the way, and then we met Brian (drums) on an app, or a website. We paid him once and we were like we like you, but we can’t really pay you, and now he’s actually paying out of his pockets.

Pan is the god of nature, Arcadia’s his home – was there intentional irony here, naming the band that when you’re all native to New York?

DYLAN: Not really irony.

EAMON: I think we thought the name Arcadia was cool, but that was taken, so then we just threw Pan on there, but then we found out about the Pan god – or, we knew, but we never put it together until much later.

DYLAN: We actually just had a chapter of the Pan Arcadian foundation [reach out], it was someone being like “you guys are cool.”

You’ve cited Lou Reed, TVU, Television, and The Strokes as past inspirations, The Strokes having a heavy influence in your first record. I feel like the new single, “Into the Glass,” is a big divergence from that – how has your sound evolved to what it is today? Who’s inspired this era?

EAMON: Henry and I kind of made that, not as a joke, but with no intention of it being a Pan Arcadia track – it was just messing around. And then Dylan was kind of the first one that really liked it when I showed it, but we just kind of sat on it as a demo for a while, and then we sent it to this producer we were gonna work with, Hugo White, along with like twenty others songs and he chose that one, so. But I think it’s cool, it’s a little more hip-hop inspired, a few more synths, and we love the Strokes – also the Ramones are a really big one for us with that kind of downstroke guitar – but you know, we don’t wanna pigeonhole ourselves with that so we wanted to explore all kinds of things.

You guys said in 2023 that you wanted the songwriting process to be more collaborative. What does that look like now? How do you strike a balance between the five of you, and how do you think that changes the stories you’re trying to tell?

BRIAN: We did have a big – we had two, I guess three really interesting sessions over the past six or eight months. We had a session that was trying to draw inspiration from like the Stones and “Exile on Main Street,” where they set up a remote recording studio in an old manor house. So we had an opportunity to go and work – Dylan’s parents have access to a space similar to that, so we went up and spent a week there where we set up our own studio and just sat in a room and came up with songs together and really just hashed it out. Then we had a more traditional studio session where we kind of already had the songs and we were recording them with another producer, this guy Pete Harper —

[A mirror falls on EAMON.]

BRIAN: — so, early this year in January, we saw that the calendar was open, and we booked a week. Eamon’s parents have this little cottage that they’re about to sell, and so it’s kind of gutted out, and we were like “why don’t we go up there for a week and see what’ll happen there,” and all three of these were different spaces, some of them more collaborative. The Pine Plains session – the last of the three – was a big departure in the way that we approached the songwriting. It was still very collaborative, we were all there in the same room, but it’d mostly be us working in pairs with the others just kind of around and we started that session with creating a huge drum sample library, and then we’d kind of pick and choose from those. So, to answer your question, how has that process changed, we’ve just been trying to explore whatever we can, and put ourselves in these different situations.

EAMON: Yeah, and one process is completely live, where it’s all everything in the same room, no isolation whatsoever, not even a cushion, so it’s like you get a ton of guitar. A lot of it we even played to a click track, so it’s really old school, might as well have done it on tape. And then the other session, everything was recorded individually, we didn’t even know where these songs were going we just had a drum beat start there – more of a modern approach, so we kind of have some things – like “Into the Glass,” in general, is more of a song that would come out of that approach, and then more of the stuff that we’re known for would probably be more of the other way.

You’d mentioned a while ago in an interview that your goal with your music is “making people feel okay with the uncomfortable parts of living.” Do you think that’s a theme that’s carried over into your newer songs?

EAMON: [laughing] Did I say that? 

Yeah, I had to ask about that. Or, what were you guys thinking about when writing?

EAMON: It makes sense, I guess, I mean we’re trying to do that more as we produce more. I think we’re getting more comfortable in jarring and uncomfortable sounds. Because that’s kind of what’s cool, you know, if everything is super comfortable, then what’s the point? It’s like, might as well go take a walk in the park or something.

Photos courtesy of Tommy Krause.

This is your first time playing in the round, right? Was the rehearsal process different? What were you thinking about going into it?

GABE: So, we actually have this basement in the house where Eamon and Henry live, we call it The Shack. And then we took measurements to try and get a sense for like the stage plot,  which we honestly undermeasured, so now this feels like a fucking mansion. But, yeah, we were facing away, so it was the first time we weren’t looking at each other while practicing, so that was definitely new. But I feel like because of that process, now we’ve tuned our ears better, so it’s like listening to yourself and looking at other people, you’re kind of mentally keeping track of five things at once.

That’s so interesting. I feel like it’d be more of a chance to let loose, since there’s so much more [space] to play with, but that wasn’t the case?

GABE: I think so. We were practicing moving, not quite choreographed, but moving to the same beat and whatnot, so in many ways, more than one, it definitely meshed our brains together a bit more. 

What are your favorite songs to perform live?

DYLAN: We should each go around for this one? Start over there [pointing at Henry].

HENRY: Mine changes a lot, depending on the mood I’m in, but right now I’d say it’s a new one called “Final Stone.”

BRIAN: I’m on the same page, I’m very excited to play that one tonight.

GABE: The newest one, yeah. It’s the most fresh one, it feels the best.

“Into the Glass,” or [“Final Stone”]?

GABE: “Final Stone.”

EAMON: “Into the Glass” is an old one for us, at this point, but yeah I think it’s always the newer ones. We have two songs that we kind of just recorded, we’re still in the process of recording them, but we only started I think a month or two ago, so they’re still super fresh, which is nice.

BRIAN: If it’s oldies, I love “After the Flood.” I have a gong moment in there.

A gong?

EMMA HUG ROSENSTEIN (EHR): Do you have a small one, or is it like a giant gong?

BRIAN: I have a thirty-two inch gong that I will, if we do that song, I will bring it out. For that one moment.

EHR: Another thing to carry, right?

EAMON: [Le Poisson Rouge] is nice, too, ‘cause they have amps – he’s brought the gong to Bowery Ballroom where we have to bring like everything in at once.

BRIAN: Well, no one’s playing with gongs anymore, so why not?

EHR: Yeah, it’s like an unexpected element.

BRIAN: When was the last time you guys saw a rock band our age with a gong?

EHR: I saw someone with a triangle.

I’ve only seen triangles, but I’ve never seen a gong. One of my favorite parts about your music is the use of non-traditional instruments, especially with the horn. I know you’ve been doing that since the beginning, but I think we’ve been seeing that rise in rock music a little bit more now. What are you looking to see more of?

HENRY: I think we wanna experiment more with synths. There’s a new song, we’re playing it tonight, where instead of a guitar solo it’s a morse code thing, so definitely getting into the weird aspects of it. We tried getting into the trumpet, and it’s cool, but at some point it’s a little too much.

EAMON: Yeah, you can’t have it on every song, I feel like with any “non-traditional rock” instrument, it’s kind of – you have to pick and choose when to use it.

DYLAN: We have a friend who’s really badass at violin, and we did get him on a few, but I’m gonna learn too, so, look out for that. I’ve got lessons on my resolutions list!

BRIAN: I’ve been learning the mandolin, there’s a few new ones that we put a couple little mandolin bits on.

EAMON: Yeah, and on the next album, not even just synths but pianos, organ, that type of thing.

Last question: what’s next? Or, what are you hoping to accomplish in 2025?

DYLAN: Well, look out for announcements soon, right?

EAMON: We’re putting out an album – this is the first single off of it, I think it’s gonna be [in] the fall.

DYLAN: Can we not talk about…the tour?

EAMON: We are doing a tour with another band that is well-known in the city, but we don’t want to announce it yet because they have another show.

DYLAN: Look out for the announcements!

GABE: Big things coming soon!

EAMON: They have more horns than us, so. We have none now.

We’ll take that as a hint.

BRIAN: We could all learn a horn and just come out with them all.

You can find Pan Arcadia on Spotify, Instagram, and their official website, and check out Into the Glass on all streaming platforms. All photos courtesy of Tommy Krause.