bradley hathaway's A Thousand Angry Panthers EP
it is a measure both of my impatience and love of a musical artist when i download an EP. when i heard that bradley hathaway had released one, i nearly dropped my phone on which i’d read the happy news. i wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. i had hoped for the filling meal of a full-length album (i’m musically greedy), but certainly a snack of this 4-song EP would at least hold my attention.
oh, it did. if “a thousand angry panthers” is the bread basket, the waiter accidentally filled it with lembas bread (a lord of the rings reference, and in case you didn’t get it, lembas bread fills your stomach with one bite).
hathaway opens with “she was raised by a man with a sickness,” a story about a girl framed unobtrusively by guitar and violin. it is a song that haunts without leaving the listener completely hopeless. he sings honestly but not morosely, his faith as open here as it is in his spoken-word. this is a theme that flows over into each successive song.
“carolina” fills in the intrumentals and evokes stretches of green hills and cloudless sky–homey but not honkytonk as he sings “and the wind brings You closer to me.” it is a tune about home and quiet that manages to feel exactly like those things.
“would you think less of me” is another story, a broken one with shades of piano and saloon blues. hathaway’s pain is shared with the listener in such a way that the most recent heartache is universal and relatable: “there is love, there is beauty, and then there is pain, and at the moment I can’t help but feel that they’re all the same.”
packing a different emotional punch with the same intensity is the finisher “the world is screaming.” it is as urgent at the title, a cry to cry out as the world falls apart around us. it’s nearly a rock anthem, the biggest musically we’ve heard hathaway, and even non-christians could agree that “…we’re all waiting for a messiah to come, but we can’t agree on who he is and which is the one.”
“a thousand angry panthers” excels at everything it attempts. hathaway sings stories enhanced by masterful–and often low-key–instrumentation and, though “just” an EP, it had the right amount of polish and the right about of bradley for a full-length release. each track is full and beautiful. at his lowest, he has created some of the most poignant music in his repetoire. hats off, sir, you’ve exceeded my expectations.
