Pan American has been a project that emerged from the embers of the last century, started by former Labradford singer/guitarist Mark Nelson. Dotted across the now 25 years as a project, Nelson emerges with its eighth full-length, Patience Fader, returning with the distinct solo guitar instrumentals and delicate atmosphere that define their sound. Patience Fader has the task of following on from A Son, which was one of Nelson’s strong pieces to date. However with his latest record being written and recorded within the isolation of a pandemic, the minimalism provided might be more striking than ever.
There is a detached but somewhat wondrous atmosphere to Patience Fader, it’s akin to being at the top of a hill and staring down into the valley below. This sense of feeling is driven by the stunning clean guitars throughout the record that are immediately present on the opener “Swimming In A Western Hotel“, the strum so delicate you can envision the pluck of the string. With each of these strums echoing and reverberating around the ear with their melancholic ambience entering the mind.
With this record, Pan American introduces elements alongside the lone guitar to flesh out its sound. Sweet interludes are present in “Baitshop” and “Wooster, Ohio“, both offering a gentle break with their ambient sounds that help ease Patience Fader through its chapters. The blend between the leading guitar and the more subdued, ambient use of them is done succinctly across each track, with the ambient moments shifting in and out like a sea’s tide across the record. The talent required to pull over both in seemingly such an effortlessly beautiful way is certainly of merit.
There isn’t a moment or a track in which Patience Fader should be singled down to. It’s a record that needs to be sat with and experienced as a whole, with each strum and sample building up into this wider and greater emotion that the album evokes. The minimalism throughout providing an antidote for the sensory overload that the modern world can so easily do. The lull of the solitude will yearn to be revisited on Patience Fader and with each listen the love for the record will grow.
8/10