Canadian pop group p:ano was formed in 1999 by high-school friends Nick Krgovich and Larissa Loyva. Nick and Larissa started out with living-room rehearsals in the suburbs outside Vancouver before graduating to a debut show in an abandoned shoe store.
Inspired by Yo La Tengo, Belle & Sebastian, and Low, they initially described their music as ‘chamber pop’ . The first p:ano album, 2002’s When it’s Dark and it’s Summer, was produced by Colin Stewart after he literally jumped out of an alley to hand the band his number while they were loading out after a school-night show.
Co-released by Zum Records and Hive-Fi, the album was a big hit in Vancouver. Supposedly When it’s Dark... sold as many copies at the legendary Zulu Records store as Neko Case’s contemporaneous CD did. Local enthusiasm was such that the labels had trouble keeping the album in print.
Shortly after, Nick and Larissa, were joined by Julia Chirka on bass and Justin Kellam on drums to form p:ano’s classic line-up. They went on to record three more ambitious albums, including a couple for Mint Records (the label that gave us Cub, The New Pornographers and, yep, Neko Case).
They toured extensively across North America and Europe to promote these albums. Their 2002 debut tour saw them opening for Jerk with a Bomb, which later transmuted into Black Mountain.
The final show by p:ano’s initial incarnation was at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival in 2006.
Around this time, Pitchfork said: “A few stronger choruses, and p:ano, despite their strange appellation and forbidding obtuseness, could go on to fashion the album of next year.” Sadly, that never happened. Perhaps p:ano was always too much of a square peg to fit into the early- 2000s indie scene, anyway.
Larissa left the group to concentrate on her solo electropop project Kellarissa. She also ended up as a touring member of How to Dress Well and ‘Kaputt’-era Destroyer. Nick, Julia, and Justin continued as No Kids, releasing an LP on Tomlab in 2008. Since then, Nick has built a critically acclaimed sophisti-pop solo career.
Then in the winter of 2023 Nick got an invitation to contribute a song for a Zum Records 25th-anniversary compilation. Time to get the band back together. Luckily, everyone was up for it.
Soon enough, the old friends were making music together for the first time in 17 years. Recording for the Zum comp was so much fun that it blossomed into a whole new p:ano album, ba ba ba. This will be self-released on LP in September, making it the first p:ano full-length to appear as a vinyl record. How things change. And yet, p:ano’s melancholy, sophisticated chamber pop sound remains timeless.