The Nottingham band the internet dug out of a charity shop is back with a 12-track album stacked with guests — and the Mei Semones-featuring lead single is out now.
By Theon — The Superfan, CelebnMusic247
The best second act in indie rock just announced its next chapter. Panchiko — the Nottingham band whose teenage demos became a lost-media legend — announced their third studio album, Chimera, on Friday, due April 9 via Nettwerk, per Stereogum. The news comes with the lead single “One Car Hits Another,” a glitchy, slow-motion waltz featuring indie jazz-pop riser Mei Semones, out now.
The strangest origin story in indie rock
Quick refresher on the lore, because it never gets old: Panchiko formed as British teenagers playing post-Radiohead alt-rock around Y2K and self-released one CD-R, 2000’s D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, before drifting into ordinary adult life. In 2016, a copy surfaced in a charity shop and was posted to 4chan, and a very young, very online fanbase spent years hunting down the men behind it, finally making contact in 2020 — by which point the band had a cult following they never asked for. The reformed Panchiko released Failed At Math(s) in 2023 and the comeback album Ginkgo in 2024. Now, per Stereogum, Chimera finds the band — these days fathers and full-time musicians recording in their own studio — making an album about exactly that impossible road.
A guest list as weird as the band
Chimera runs 12 tracks deep in collaborators. Rapper billy woods, who graced the Ginkgo single “Shandy In The Graveyard,” returns alongside Cotillon on opener “Day One.” Semones appears on three songs in total, including “Glazing” and “Zinc Spark,” and the credits also pull in Clarion (twice), Hugh Pascall, Korea Girl, Abby Sage, CJ’s Mirra Maze and Lula Nova. As for the single, keyboardist and producer Andy Wright described picturing a serene waltz of a car crash — onlookers and soon-to-be roadkill singing along in slow motion — and mused that a handshake and a car crash are both, technically, meetings. Nobody else in music writes press quotes like this band lives its life: sideways, and somehow sincere.
Panchiko are playing London tonight
The announcement lands mid-tour. Panchiko are in the middle of a sold-out UK and Ireland run — Bristol on Friday, London’s Roundhouse tonight (Saturday, Oct. 24), then Manchester on Oct. 28, Belfast on Oct. 30 and Dublin on Oct. 31. London fans get a bonus on Sunday (Oct. 25): a one-day merch event at JERKS and WASTE on Hackney Road with exclusive items, archival artwork and free flexi vinyl copies of “One Car Hits Another.” A band that once couldn’t give its CD away is now handing out free vinyl to a queue. Somewhere, that charity shop is proud.
The 247 Take — Every Panchiko announcement is a reminder that the internet, for all its noise, occasionally does something beautiful: it found this band. Chimera isn’t a nostalgia cash-in — it’s a group of dads in their own studio, loading a record with billy woods verses and jazz-pop features, sounding like the strangest timeline won. April can’t come fast enough. One car hits another; one lost band finds its people.
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Sources: Stereogum | Consequence
