In between their Coachella Weekends 1 and 2 sets, Together Pangea and Spain’s Prison Affair stopped off in Los Angeles for a sold-out show at the El Rey Theatre — a sweaty, cathartic night that offered fans a more intimate taste of the chaos they’d just unleashed in the desert. While both bands came with buzz, they offered two very different flavors of punk-adjacent mayhem — one a homegrown institution, the other a rising international cult.
Together Pangea has long been synonymous with LA’s garage rock underground. Formed in 2008 when frontman William Keegan began sharing songs from his dorm room, the band quickly found footing in the DIY circuit before crashing through with 2014’s Badillac. Known for their explosive live shows and slacker-meets-sleaze songwriting, they’ve become a staple of Southern California’s indie rock scene — the kind of band that’s always on someone’s “you had to be there” list. And while their El Rey set was classic Together Pangea — wild, gritty, and tight — there was a warmth to it, too. Maybe it’s the fact that Keegan and his partner Kelsey are expecting their first child soon, a new chapter that adds a subtle sense of joy and evolution to a band that’s never stopped moving forward.
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That said, this wasn’t just a victory lap for local legends. If there was a band that captured the night’s rawest energy, it was opener Prison Affair — the mysterious post-punk trio from Barcelona who’ve become one of the most talked-about underground acts of the moment. With a sound that fuses jagged guitar riffs, throbbing bass, and warped, tape-saturated vocals, Prison Affair delivers their songs with a clinical detachment that somehow makes them even more menacing. Think Devo on a comedown, or The Spits through a broken answering machine. Their second-ever LA performance felt like a basement show in a venue built for red carpets, and the crowd ate it up.
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Formed in 2018 and mostly operating under a cloud of anonymity, Prison Affair has quietly built a following through limited-run cassettes, gritty split releases, and lo-fi visual aesthetics that look ripped from a stolen VHS tape. Their upcoming Demo IV EP, due out in May 2025, is already being passed around by diehard fans like contraband. If their Coachella appearance cracked open the door to a wider audience, this El Rey show kicked it clean off the hinges.
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Both bands — one beloved and battle-tested, the other elusive and electric — reminded us what live music is supposed to feel like. Not perfect, not polished, but loud, weird, communal, and cathartic. In a city known for short attention spans and endless distractions, nights like this cut through the noise.
Words and Photos: Taylor Wong
