Playlouder - Music is the Network

Palms don’t give much away. All I can gather is that they’re a double act – Ryan Schaefer and Nadja Korinth – who recorded this album in New York with Nicolas Vernhes, whose previous projects include the illustrious likes of Cat Power, Animal Collective and Black Dice.

You’d be wise not to allow that little information to colour your expectations accordingly though: you could find yourself quite disappointed, or indeed quite the opposite.

This is the first full-length release on their own label, Rare Book Room Records.

Now, whether the lack of context surrounding the release is contrived or organic matters not – it ensures you approach it with trepidation, but with a relatively open mind. And this can only be a good thing, as the nature of this beast is so chimerical as to sometimes leave one grasping for meaning, and we all know how clumsy that can render us.

I continue to feel I’m out of my depth as it goes on… Fortunately, by about midway through, I’m quite ready to drown in it, rather than swim for shore: the compositions here are often ambient and without regular melodic focus, yet filled with beauty nonetheless: sometimes tremulous skewed country or freaky folk and sometimes martial electronic weirdness. One thing which remains consistent is the quality.

The vocals are spoken, sung, or sometimes screamed, in English, German and possibly a middle ground betwixt the two. And though the female one is more prominent, the interplay between the two is essential.

Some of the industrial-sounding percussion is reminiscent of Portishead’s recent output, or perhaps much more so of various folk/drone/electronic acts hailing from Germany and the surrounding countries.

Either way, there’s nothing about this release that screams out identification with any recognised scene, US or otherwise. It raises questions and it gives few answers, and ultimately leaves me quite confused and helpless.

It is, however, somewhat addictive. No sooner had I finished listening than I wanted to listen again, and closer, to unpick the tapestry.

‘New Moon’ is an ethereal piece whose beauty is driven by the soft percussion and Nadja’s vague vocals, which are at their best here.

‘Hang your Head’ and ‘Monte Alban’ involve chanting and wailing – here the female voice is much less vague, but no less evocative, and owes more to tribal or pagan hymns than it does to modern pop. The often primitive, repetitive percussion further imbue this album with a sense of the ancient, or perhaps just the natural. It manages to be primal while maintaining its modernity, and perhaps more importantly, artsy without becoming arsey.

‘End of Term’ , more than any other, evokes the chaotic playfulness of the Velvet Underground, so often aspired to and so rarely matched by contemporaries. Still, it does so through the dark and abnormal filter through which all of ‘It’s Midnight in Honolulu’ is pumped. ‘Leather Daddies’, in paying homage to Sonic youth, the Jesus and Mary Chain and their ilk, is the only track that even comes close to being modish, but is executed with as much sympathy and clarity as the rest of this collection, and doesn’t upset the flow.

‘Agniezka’  and ‘Das Lowenfell’ are wavering off-kilter ballad that sit wonderfully in-between the more discordant numbers, but are not without their jagged edges.

In fact, it’s all great. This is the best album I’ve heard in months.

It’s not often that I pick up an album at random and find it interesting enough to be worthy of close inspection and repeated listens. It’s rarer yet that it’s one so baffling and beautiful as this. Palms have made my day – buy this now: you will not regret it.