The Pantones were born in the wake of a derelict printshop in mid-Michigan, the first record recorded to magnetic tape stacks of forgotten paper and abandoned inks. Songwriter Matthew Carlson took the color system he'd employed there as the name of his new band and in 2000 he released "Cosmic Americana" a threadbare group of confidential songs that drew heavily on the Byrd's "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" and R.E.M.'s "Reckoning". Two years later came "Memory is All" an album that Popmatters called, "nearly flawless, pretty without being boring."
Carlson's next offering, 2005's "Sleepless Nights, Silent Mornings," saw the band name reduced to simply, "The Pantones" and delivered a program more intelligent pop/rock than the Americana on which they'd built a reputation. Releasing the album on their own Phonophore label. The Pantones made all the right moves to promote it, touring the Mid-west, playing more than 100 independently-booked shows in Michigan, garnering college radio airplay at dozens of schools across the nation, and sharing stages from Toronto to St. Louis with Glorytellers, John Stirratt of Wilco, Healthy White Baby, Great Lakes Myth Society and Canada.
While they were driving to gigs, loading out gear, calling bookers and sleeping on floors, the press was noticing "Sleepless Nights, Silent Mornings." The Lansing State Journal said it was "reinvented, polished-without- being-slick," and CD Times called it, "A great hidden gem of a record." As proud as Carlson was of all the praise "Sleepless Nights, Silent Mornings" was receiving, it wasn't long before a new bunch of songs began to take shape in his head. It was time for The Pantones to make another record.
Following the same formula of Carlson writing the songs and the band arranging them in one mammoth four-day practice session, "Inside the Sun's Wild Flame" came to light at a cabin in the Michigan woods before being recorded and mixed at El Pop Studio in Eaton Rapids, Michigan. With Mary Baldwin reprising her role as violinist and pedal steel and electric guitar accompaniments by Jeremy Rapp, "Inside the Sun's Wild Flame" finds the Pantones torqued down into tight performances and self-assured arrangements that demonstrate an increasing ease and familiarity with smart, sincere, and instinctive americana-indie-pop.
