Panther Heart (minus one) in their practice space

In Long Beach’s fantastic, heterogeneous music scene, you’ve got to be doing something pretty damn original to come off as unique.

For Panther Heart, that’s no problem. That’s because this band started in 2008 as a freeform project consisting of Christopher Lyles looping lines of harp (his primary instrument) and accordion is now an orchestral-rock nontet hard at work on Panther Heart Defeats the Dire Wolf, a refined, two-hour instrumental song cycle meant to serve as a mediation on how the perpetuation of hate can only be stopped with love.

If that sounds a little bit hippie, a lot ambitious, and extremely unlikely to crack the Top 40, then the members of Panther Heart will tell you I’ve imparted some truth about what they do. But as with any project that’s musically original, only by listening can you understand what’s going down.

As luck would have it, Friday night is a rare chance to catch this band, whose music simply is not suited to run-of-the-mill live music venues.

“We’re not going to just go and play at the Prospector,” says guitarist Jose Serna, meaning no offense to the Prospector. “Booking us has to be really intentional. We can’t just play anywhere; we have to play art shows or somewhere that’s quiet where people intentionally go [to actively listen to] music.”

With that in mind, Friday’s performance of the first part of Panther Heart Defeats the Dire Wolf will happen in the EXPO Building, and the band hopes those who show up to the free show will do so ready to let the music carry you away. Which is not to say the performance will be remotely random or unstructured.

“One of my concerns, coming from an indie-pop sort of band [namely, The Clouds], was that I didn’t want to bore the audience,” Serna says. “But for anyone reading this, I don’t want them to think they’re going to come into some crazy avant-garde, kicking-a-bucket-of-nails-every-once-in-a-while kind of thing. People can understand what’s happening and enjoy us.”

That enjoyment, along with the ability to tune in to the wordless expression of the story of Panther Heart Defeats the Dire Wolf, will be facilitated by program notes the band will provide to audience members, a technique often employed by composers to accompany orchestral pieces (such as Hector Berlioz did for Symphony Fantastique).

“Reading the program notes beforehand will really help, […] going into the show knowing that this is a story about how us humans can just perpetuate hate, and we can stop it by loving each other,” says Serna. “We thought it was important to have a program that at least explained generally what we’re doing.”

The story of Panther Heart Defeats the Dire Wolf begins with a traveler through an ancient forest who drifts into the wrong territory and for, his innocent error, is drowned by its residents. His spirit becomes trapped in the river, and a wolf who drinks from the waters is driven to murderous madness by the pain of the soul she has imbibed.

The concept came to Lyles from a frequent encounter with a woman in his Willmore District neighborhood.

“I don’t know what her deal was, but she was always very angry,” Lyles relates. “I’d smile and try to say hello to her every time, but she was not having it. She just had this anger in her eyes. But you could tell that behind the anger there was so much hurt. And I’d see the way she’d interact with her children: she’d just cuss them out and treat them like shit. And I would see how those children would interact other children playing in the common areas: they would treat those kids like shit. It became this cycle. […] I started to notice how in humanity there’s this cycle that begins when people treat each other like shit; it just continues. […] When does the hate stop? [Panther Heart Defeats the Dire Wolf] is about all of us and how we interact daily.”

“We’re trying to tell the story of how hate just continues unless we stop it — which is by loving each other,” says Serna.

“At this show people will finally know what’s going on, because they can read about it,” adds keyboardist Pam Gartner, alluding to the fact that over the last couple of years Panther Heart has test-driven songs from Panther Heart Defeats the Dire Wolf without the audience’s having the chance to understand the idea behind the music.

This increased consideration of the audience’s experience of Panther Heart comes across not only in the form of the enlightening program notes, but also visually.

“We’re so much more aware of the audience now,” says bassist Jason Cordero. “We’re so much more aware that we’re performing for an audience that kind of expects something of us. We’ve put in the time as a collective to really give the audience a show now. There are songs, there’s structure, there’s a story, there’s vocals…. It’s really come together nicely over the last few years.”

The deliberateness with which Panther Heart is crafting its epic, as well as the infrequency with which the band has played out, testify to the unit’s focus.

“We’re not career musicians: we’re artists first,” says drummer Ryan Serrano. “Maybe the difference is, like, some people want to be prolific because they want to be out there and be seen, and they want to have their art consumed. […] We’re doing music with the idea of creating art, not of being popular or being able to play shows every weekend or every month even. […] Our process entails [taking] longer to yield something of higher quality.”

Part of the origin of Panther Heart’s unique sound is its conflation of schooled musicians/vocalists with raw, untutored talent. Guillermo Gomez Luna, the band’s classically-trained cellist with an operatic background, recalls his first time seeing Panther Heart.

“I’m sitting in Zephyr thinking, ‘How is it possible these guys are doing this, when they’ve gotten little to no training?’ It blew me away,” he says. “I was very intrigued by that. […] I am fed by these individuals was this raw energy and this raw approach to their craft, which, from my perspective, with the training I’ve [had], it was so much more, because it was pure. It comes from an unadulterated place. […] But I’ve also seen amazing growth from them vocally over the last few months. It’s so fantastic to see my friends blossom into amazing, amazing singers in their own way.”

Singers without words? Orchestral music without an orchestra? Yeah, it’s hard to get one’s mind around without actually hearing the band in action. “Sigur Rós meets The Flaming Lips” is probably not the worst comparison, but Panther Heart is pure Panther Heart.

“I think of [Panther Heart] as a very orchestral group,” says Serrano. “When people ask me, I have a hard time describing the band. I don’t even like answering that question. […] It’s very theatrical. We have all these sensory elements beyond just music. It’s more about an experiential performance rather than just exhibiting music.”

“The musical proposition we’ve put together is very enticing,” says Luna. “To be able to create a painting, basically, without using words […] that is very fulfilling for me.”

“It’s kind of cool to hear where Chris started, and then to have the nine of us completely add our own things,” adds Serna. “It’s pretty epic. I think the audience is really going to feel it.”

Want to feel it? Panther Heart performs Panther Heart Defeats the Dire Wolf (Part 1) Friday night at the EXPO Building (4321 Atlantic Ave., LB 90807). Admission: FREE! Doors open at 8 p.m. Audience members are encouraged to show up on time, to read the program notes in advance of the performance, and to be prepared for over an hour of continuous music. Think of it as going to a symphony — with video projections. Dig.