It’s hard to believe that Pardoner is the first time Max Freeland and Trey Flanigan have ever played guitar in a band before. Not only do they seem to have an endless repository of ideas, but they play together like a single unit. Only drummer River van den Berghe has any prior experience, having briefly played in several high school projects before meeting the other members as students at San Francisco State University. A mutual interest in Yo La Tengo and Polvo records sparked their own experiments