WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) — There's an unspoken reverence emanating from the crowd as Peter Cat Recording Co. begins to play the blend of disco and jazzy psychedelic melodies that intro “People Never Change.”
All of a sudden, singer and guitarist Suryakant Sawhney launches into the melancholy, self-aware lyrics that contrast the upbeat track. Cheers erupt from the sea of fans packed like tinned fish inside the intimate West Hollywood, California, venue, swaying back and forth as Sawhney's crooning, Frank Sinatra-esque vocals wash over them.
It's an August night at the Troubadour, and music lovers have gathered for a seemingly spiritual experience in the form of an album release party. Phones are out for only a few songs. “BETA” has been out for less than 72 hours at this point and already fans are singing along to almost every word.
“I think ultimately the kind of people who come to the shows end up being people who have actually had deeper connection with the music itself,” said Sawhney. “It (the music) requires people to know them, have heard them, internalize them, know the lyrics so then they can enjoy themselves.”
The New Delhi-based band has quickly risen from its status as an indie band popular among South Asian audiences to embarking on a 77-stop headlining world tour through December. The tour titled “Good Luck Beta '24,” is hitting North America, Europe and India, while Peter Cat is also opening for Khruangbin during select dates.
“It felt like a good place to start,” Sawhney said of the West Coast choice.
“I mean, at least in the U.S., really, it was very organic,” he said with respect to the band’s rise in popularity. Peter Cat Recording Co. was born on New Year's Day 2011 and emerged onto the music scene with their debut album, “Sinema.” They're named after the Peter Cat restaurant in Kolkata and Sawhney's “desire to be a businessman rather than just a musician.”
After a 2012 tour through India, their first show outside of the country was in Berlin, in 2015. Four years later, the album “Bismillah” launched them onto the radar of global audiophiles, generating a new strain of fans.
Sawhney and his bandmates — Karan Singh on drums, Dhruv Bhola on bass, Rohit Gupta on keys and wind instruments and Kartik Pillai on guitar and various instruments — have a self-proclaimed “laidback energy as a group,” creating an atmosphere similar to a theatrical performance. As the band transitioned from song to song with very little banter, fans listened to hits from “Bismillah” and 2018’s “Portrait of a Time: 2010-2016,” along with newer tracks from “BETA,” like “Suddenly” and “Flowers R. Blooming.”
Their synergy is evidence of the current band members' dynamic. Since its inception, Peter Cat Recording Co. has had members come and go, but the current lineup has been working together since 2018.
“I think if you want to stick together as a band, there are some things that would seem to be fundamental where you have to be able to split a lot of your success equally, regardless of how it works,” Sawhney said. “So, sometimes you need to operate more like a family, just in order for it to work, actually, because I think all this stuff gets complicated.”
While Sawhney’s vocals can be heard throughout most of the album, “BETA” also highlights the voices of Bhola and Pillai on “I Deny Me” and “Foolmuse.” During their performances, each band member gets the spotlight as they shuffle throughout the stage, playing different instruments depending on the track.
Sawhney says the group aims to transcend labels like “band” or “collective.”
“They're just terms. They mean nothing. In reality, you just at each step, assess whether working together is mutually benefiting everybody. And you’re all moving ahead in some form,” says Sawhney.
When recording, the band says they all take part in production. The band describes the 13-track “BETA” in a press release as “a collection of stories about the future told 50 years in the past to make sense of the present on our only home, planet earth.” It transitions from genre to genre, ranging from alt-rock to disco. The band prefers to avoid being boxed in.
“Sometimes it’s nice to not be easily reducible,” said Sawhney.
The album was recorded in various locations from Goa, India to Joshua Tree, California. Its title is Hindi for “son” and was announced by Singh’s six-month old son. In an Instagram post, Singh is shown laying out folded pieces of white paper in front of the crawling baby, who grabs one of the pieces, unveiling the title for the album. The other titles were in the running?
“They weren’t good enough, I guess, to even share,” Singh said.
When first crafting “BETA,” Sawhney and Singh said that “Flowers R. Blooming” was the track that cemented the beginning of the album and the first they completed while recording during their last U.S. tour.
“I think it sums up that little trip we took, starting from India and going all the way through America,” said Sawhney. “The spaces we chose to record these songs just naturally lend themselves to be those spaces to record that song, whether it was because of the acoustics, whether it was because of the surrounding environment or just general vibe, for lack of a better word.”
From left, Karan Singh, Suryakant Sawhney, Kartik Pillai,Dhruv Bhola, and Rohit Gupta from Peter Cat Recording Co pose for a photograph in Mumbai, India, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
From left, Dhruv Bhola, Kartik Pillai, Suryakant Sawhney, Karan Singh, and Rohit Gupta of Peter Cat Recording Co pose for a photograph in Mumbai, India, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade))
From bottom to top, Suryakant Sawhney, Rohit Gupta, Kartik Pillai, Dhruv Bhola and Karan Singh of Peter Cat Recording Co pose for a photograph in Mumbai, India, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
From left, Rohit Gupta, Kartik Pillai, Karan Singh, Suryakant Sawhney, and Dhruv Bhola of Peter Cat Recording Co. pose for a photograph in Mumbai, India, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
Florida residents began repairing damage from Hurricane Milton, which smashed through coastal communities and tore homes to pieces, flooded streets and spawned a deadly tornadoes.
At least nine people are dead, but many expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse.
Follow AP’s coverage of tropical weather at https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes.
Here’s the latest:
But Deanne Criswell says FEMA will need additional funding at some point.
Criswell says the agency is keeping account every day of how much they’re drawing from the disaster assistance fund. That’s a pot of money allocated specifically to help the agency respond to emergencies across the country.
The fund gets replenished every year by Congress and is used to pay for recovery from hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and other disasters.
Congress recently replenished the fund with $20 billion — the same amount FEMA got last year. About $8 billion of that is set aside for recovery from previous storms and mitigation projects.
Criswell says the fund won’t have enough money to last through the entire fiscal year, which stretches to September of next year. She says at some point, they’ll have to go back to Congress to ask for a boost to the disaster relief fund.
“We will need one. It’s just a matter of when,” she said.
Mayor Lynne Matthews spoke at a news conference Friday with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and the city’s manager, Gregory B. Murray.
Matthews says 121 people had to be rescued after Hurricane Helene made landfall Sept. 26 but rescuers only had to save three people after Milton came through.
“So people listened to the evacuation order,” Matthews said.
“I know we had teams out with the megaphones going through all of our mobile home communities and other places to let people know that they needed to evacuate,” she said.
Bruce Kinsler, 68, was part of a Polk County “push crew” that began clearing roads before 6 a.m. on Thursday. A truck struck Kinsler as he and a coworker were trying to clear a tree that had fallen across the road as the storm passed through the area. The driver of the truck was a county employee who was arriving to join Kinsler for post-storm recovery work.
“The tragedy of this incident is compounded by the fact that Bruce Kinsler was killed serving the residents of this county,” said Bill Braswell, chairman of the Polk County Commission. “We ask a lot of the employees as public servants, and they respond to the call. For this to happen is just a tragedy.”
The White House announced Biden’s visit but did not detail exactly where the president will travel.
Biden was scheduled to be briefed by aides Friday afternoon on the federal response and recovery in the aftermath of Hurricanes Milton and Helene. He’ll then deliver remarks from the White House to update the public about those efforts.
One of those Friday was a large pig stuck in high water at a strip mall in Lithia, FLorida, which is east of Tampa. Cindy Evers led the rescue of the pig and she’s also saved a donkey and several goats.
The animals are being taken to Evers’ farm for the time being.
“I’m high and dry where I’m at and I have a barn and nine acres,” she said. “So we have plenty of room for these animals to be safe.” Evers said she’ll figure out next steps later, such as finding the animals' owners.
Gov. DeSantis noted interactions with downed power lines and water.
“We are seeing hazards that are still there,” he said. He said people should take care around standing water and should use generators properly.
“You have to make the proper decisions and know that there are hazards out there,” he said.
Human-caused climate change intensified deadly Hurricane Milton ’s rainfall by 20 to 30% and strengthened its winds by about 10%, scientists said in a new flash study. The analysis comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated the southeastern United States, a storm also fueled by climate change.
World Weather Attribution researchers said Friday that without climate change, a hurricane like Milton would make landfall as a weaker Category 2, not considered a “major” storm, instead of a Category 3.
WWA’s rapid studies aren’t peer-reviewed but use peer-reviewed methods. The WWA compares a weather event with what might have been expected in a world that hasn’t warmed about 1.3 degree Celsius since pre-industrial times.
▶ Read more about how climate change affected Milton.
Only authorized personnel are allowed on the bases. There was damage and flooding at MacDill, which is home to U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command.
There's no significant damage at Patrick and teams are working to restore critical infrastructure, according to the Air Force.
The river is 25 miles (40 kilometers) long and runs from eastern Hillsborough County, east of Tampa, into Tampa Bay.
The sheriff’s office asked people to call 911 if they need help getting out of their homes.
A pair of unwelcome and destructive guests named Helene and Milton have stormed their way into this year’s presidential election.
The back-to-back hurricanes have jumbled the schedules of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, both of whom devoted part of their Thursdays to tackling questions about the storm recovery effort.
The two hurricanes are forcing basic questions about who as president would best respond to deadly natural disasters, a once-overlooked issue that has become an increasingly routine part of the job. And just weeks before the Nov. 5 election, the storms have disrupted the mechanics of voting in several key counties.
A pick up drives past a guard gate on a flooded street in Siesta Key, Fla., following the passage Hurricane Milton, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
FILE - People are rescued from an apartment complex after flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, Oct. 10, 2024, in Clearwater, Fla. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
FILE - A house sits toppled off its stilts after the passage of Hurricane Milton, alongside an empty lot where a home was swept away by Hurricane Helene, in Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island, Fla., Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)