Palace

The vocals in Palace belong to Leo. Fucking Leo. That fucker. 

Leo Wyndham’s voice has always bothered me though. 

It feels so fucking smooth and buttery, there is no possible way this dude isn't tossing his tonsils through an effects processor. What sort of cyborg human hybrid sounds like this?

I've almost refused to get back on a Palace kick again because the last time Tom wrote about one of their EPs, I spent the better part of an entire season ignoring the rest of my library. 

Palace is the band that doesn't just reserve the head table in your head, they rent out the entire fucking restaurant, you feed them for free, and then you thank them for it. Matter of fact, you don't even expect a "you're welcome" because these fuckers are so fucking adorable. 

Trust me, there isn't just an impressive throat at the helm of this band, their guitar work is powerfully crisp and nostalgic. It feels like what you'd attribute to Tears For Fears if Tears For Fears was way fucking better than the actual band Tears For Fears. 

Every song seems to hold some form of sentimentality every time I start the album over. So Long Forever is the kind of album that will either kick you in the balls because you won't be able to focus on anything but how much you love it, or it will be the album that even when you aren't listening to it, you're thinking about listening to it again. 

For me, it's both.

I've had this shit in my front pocket for the last three months almost, and every time I sit down to write about it I end up staring out the window at a degraded shredded plastic grocery bag flapping in the fucking cold wind. Palace is the band that you're dying to listen to when you're not, and when you finally are, you can't really imagine a time when you weren't.

"Break The Silence" is the perfect welcome for anyone not familiar with Palace, but it's perhaps the hardest song to not start over. The layers of reverb, on both Leo's voice and the guitars, make for such a warm and soupy bath of comfortable intrigue. The ride cymbal on this song is the rug that ties the whole room together, and I've decided that I could put this song first in a playlist titled "Songs To Die To" and I wouldn't regret my decision one iota. 

When "Bitter" gets rolling, the rolling tom thumps and the (again) thickly reverberated guitar tone join forces behind Leo's throat to paint an incredibly breezy and topless picture, which is somehow both romantic and comfortably tense.

This juxtaposition of sexy and unsettled is all over this fucking album. The beauty of each song fulfills, while the pleading and desperate undertones remind me that life isn't this beautiful without simultaneously ignoring some other ugly injustice somewhere else. There aren't these highs without some other lows.

Palace has allowed me the ability to respect and appreciate the beauty emanating from their music while also addressing and facing head on the fucking bullshit dominating the headlines in early 2017.

We need music this fucking perfect to continue to inspire us to step out of our comfortable houses and bubbles to attack the idea that we aren't capable of love. 

WE NEED SONGS LIKE "IT'S OVER" TO SOFTEN THE BLOW WHEN WE FIND OUT SO MANY OF OUR FRIENDS CHOOSE SILENCE OVER VOLUME WHEN THE LIBERTIES OF STRANGERS ARE BEING SHAT UPON. 

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING.

Damnit, now I have to start this album over again.