Packers & Movers made their debut album in a bedroom. Not “bedroom” as a vibe or a genre tag, an actual bedroom, next to a main road, with dodgy wiring and traffic leaking into the takes. The band didn’t scrub any of that out, and that’s kind of the whole point. Men and Their Major Chords is 15 songs and nearly an hour long, built over four years across six different houses. Every one of them was written, produced and recorded in rooms the band no longer lives in.
There was a plan to do it properly, track at home, then book a studio for drums and vocals. It didn’t survive contact with reality. “We became attached to our desks and never really left,” they say. No budget, working full time jobs, the logistics never lining up. So the compromise became the method, and the method became the sound.
The sound
The first thing that hits you is how lived-in it feels. The band leaves in the noise, the little imperfections, because chasing clean was never the goal. “Far Caspian taught us that a recording doesn’t need to be perfectly hi-fi to feel emotional,” they say. “That gave us the confidence to embrace the rough edges instead of sanding everything down.” You can hear that trust all over the record.
For all the DIY grit, though, this is a properly written album. “Two Timezones” is a 2020s indie song through and through, guitars jangling like it’s the 80s. “Soft Men Love Radiohead” is exactly what the title promises, odd, uneasy sounds stacked over melancholy chords, the band’s Radiohead obsession worn on the sleeve. The quieter ones, “Foolish Thoughts” and “The Room,” keep something interesting bubbling in the production even when the songs themselves sit still. And when it all clicks, “Cauliflower,” and especially the lovely “Boys & Girls”, it’s some of the better indie rock you’ll hear this year.
The influences aren’t hidden, but the band is smart about what it took from each. Radiohead for commitment: “Once they decide an idea is worth pursuing, they follow it wherever it leads, even if it means abandoning convention.” The 1975 for refusing to sit in one genre. Slowdive and Turnover for the dreamy, washed-out edges. It adds up to a record that moves around a lot without ever losing the thread.
The writing
Ask where the songs come from and the band doesn’t reach for anything grand. “The lyrics mostly came from life,” they say. “Your twenties are a strange time. Some things have already happened, some are happening right now, and some haven’t happened yet, but you can feel them coming. A lot of these songs sit somewhere between those states.”
“Talk” is the clearest example. Dhanush wrote it stuck in a job he couldn’t stand, making kids’ content for a company. “Every day felt like I was spending my time building someone else’s uncertain idea while ignoring my own. I was missing my girlfriend, I was away from my instruments, and I felt completely disconnected from the things that made me feel like myself.” The funny part is where it started: Charli XCX’s “party 4 u,” which sounds nothing like the finished song. “I know that sounds completely random considering how the song turned out, but that’s honestly where it started. Sometimes inspiration doesn’t arrive in a logical way.”
The band’s honest about the hard parts too, including the least flattering one. “The biggest challenge was that we simply weren’t very good writers when we started.” The two years of recording were also two years of getting better in real time, listening to more, developing taste, and figuring out what worked.
The name
The band name has a story, and it explains a lot that you need to know about them. Dhanush and his friend Pranam were watching a timelapse of a cargo ship hauling goods across the ocean when Pranam said, out of nowhere, “We’re all just Packers & Movers, bro.” A joke at first. Then it stuck. “We, as human beings, pack up all our emotions and keep moving ahead in life. It was a symbolic moment for us, and it sounded bloody cool.” For a band that made its debut across six houses, the name stopped being funny somewhere along the way.
What’s next
For now they’re staying close to home, gigs in Bangalore, hopefully some festivals, and a long-held wish to play Mumbai. They’re also building out a visual identity, wanting PAM to be more than just the music. “We want PAM to be a multidimensional project where we want to take up visual storytelling and incorporate that into our sonic identity.” There’s even talk of small, curated private shows. “Live sessions are really a long lost art.” That ambition suits the album. Men and Their Major Chords is a debut on paper only.
