Pardoner’s Target Practice Keeps the Volume Up and the Sarcasm in Check

Pardoner have built a catalog on a simple tension: guitars loud enough to bury the words, melodies sweet enough to make you want to dig them out anyway. On Target Practice, their fifth full-length, the San Francisco four-piece keeps that balance intact, with Max Freeland and Trey Flanigan trading vocals somewhere behind a wall of guitar, bass, and drums.

The reference points the band works from are well established, from Hüsker Dü’s hard-soft collisions to Pavement’s slack wit and Teenage Fanclub’s melodic generosity. Their previous record, Came Down Different, was received as their sharpest and most enjoyable, and notably one of their most sarcastic. Target Practice pulls in the other direction. “Performance” is the clearest evidence: an acoustic guitar, Freeland crooning a verse about wanting to be a performer that lands somewhere between sincerity and self-mockery, and refuses to pick a side.

Elsewhere the band leans harder. “We’re Living in Violent Times” moves with a Buzzcocks-style rush and verses half-swallowed by the mix. “Twisted,” the single, is an off-kilter love song with a line that carries Paul Westerberg’s mix of grace and sneer, plus guitars that ring out like sirens. The title track is the outlier, where Freeland leans on Auto-Tune hard enough to break the record’s spell. The Barracudas cover “Changing Mags,” a nod to an obscure 1970s surf-and-garage outfit, closes things out with the same chaotic, melodic logic the band has been chasing all along.

What holds Target Practice together is its refusal to resolve. Pardoner stay loud, stay ambivalent, and keep the joke and the feeling in the same breath.