Her Space Holiday

Former hardcore scenester Marc Bianchi is the brains of the Her Space Holiday operation. Therefore, he can do whatever the hell he wants on his records. On the eyebrow-raising Xoxo, Panda and the New Kid Revival, Bianchi takes a severe left turn, abandoning the computerized sounds that marked previous Her Space Holiday efforts in favor of an organic, folk-driven style. In an age where everyone and their grandmother is embracing technology for everything from making music to shopping, Bianchi is reverting back to the olden days when instrumentation was the essential way to make music! He's foregoing a techy sound, and Xoxo, Panda and the New Kid Revival is a better album because of it.

Bianchi, backed by several contributing musicians on this record, has a sweet, tender voice and strummy songs such as "The Heartbreak Moment" and "The Year in Review" fit the indie rock mold. The songs are as full and rich as they are geeky. It's as though we've stumbled upon a closet musician and his compositions and he's shy about letting us have a closer listen. There's a few psychedelic touches on "No More Good Ideas," while "Sleepy Tigers" is the album's most stimulating track, as it's laced with a down-home, roots rock aura. At 14 songs, Xoxo, Panda and the New Kid Revival is a bit long. However, with today's shrinking musical economy due to digital downloading, Bianchi and Her Space Holiday are giving fans more bang for their hard-earned buck. Xoxo, Panda and the New Kid Revival could have been fostered in a college dorm room, since it snaps, claps, sways, thumps and marches to the beat of its own drummer boy, who just so happens to have a preference for the kazoo! Props to Bianchi for moving forward by taking a step back. That's certainly not easy to do.

— Amy Sciarretto
10.14.08

A short time after the release of two rather experimental EPs (Let's Get Quiet, Vols. 1 & 2), bedroom knob twiddler Marc Bianchi returned with a decidedly less clinical Her Space Holiday outing, 2008's XOXO, Panda and the New Kid Revival. Here we find the man taking a turn from the insular, pastoral, electronic-based template of some 15-plus prior releases to a more organic, immediate, and rough-around-the-edges approach. The synth-pads, dreamy string atmospherics, and meticulous sonic perfectionism that normally mark a Her Space Holiday outing have been largely replaced with semi-in-tune guitars, loose percussion, shaky banjo and visceral vocal takes. Without the polish on, Bianchi actually does pretty well -- serving this upbeat (both musically and emotionally) collection with a more freewheeling hand and less neurotic attention to detail. The result makes for a fun experience in the headphones -- no doubt helped by the sense of fun conveyed by the performers through the recording process itself. It sounds like they enjoyed themselves. It sounds spontaneous, and it sounds (save for Bianchi's one-trick vocal range) not much like what you'd expect a late-stage Her Space Holiday album to sound like. Marc Bianchi has, at least for now, chucked his dour Stephin Merritt leanings and adopted a more Nick Lowe-like free-spirited confidence (check "The Heartbreak Moment" for a good example of this) and the whole thing sounds, if not exactly cathartic, at least liberating. ~ J. Scott McClintock, All Music Guide