Music / music
Review: Palace, Thekla
Palace, the dreamy alt blues / rock band packed out Thekla. Touring off the back of last November’s release of their critically acclaimed and highly anticipated debut, ‘So Long Forever’, the London based 4 piece have racked up millions of listens on their Soundcloud. Proclaimed by many as 2017’s answer to The Maccabees and Foals, it wasn’t difficult to predict the kind of crowd that they would attract. The venue was teeming with young middle class hipsters. At times you couldn’t even move out of fear of being trodden on by one of the countless pairs of Doc Martin boots, or getting your hair caught in someone’s septum piercing.
Such an ambience was reflected in the image of support act, Willie J Healey. Self described as ‘rock n stroll’ Healey’s performance is reminiscent of a teenage shouty boy band from a 90s American coming of age film rehearsing in their parents garage. Hailing from Oxfordshire, the 22 year old’s sound was quite familiar, an eclectic mixture of many different things. Although he flitted between many different genres, from the lo fi Mac De Marco whammy bar guitar effect, the bluesy slide guitar in ‘Subterraneans’, into a Meatloaf-esque guitar solo, the combination of all these influences give him his own USP, cutting him aside from the many other indie bands around at the moment.
After a lot of anticipation, building up a very intense and atmospheric instrumental intro, Palace actually got off to a little bit of a sketchy start. Beginning in the wrong key, they had to start their first song again, but instead of impairing their set, it turned out to be a very good ice-breaker. The humbling reaction of the band combined with the warm, encouraging response from the crowd created a lovely rapport between the two parties, giving the gig a very intimate feeling and showing that the band don’t take themselves too seriously.
is needed now More than ever
After that little hiccup I don’t think I could fault the bands performance, as the set was so well-engineered it seemed to progress like the storyline of a relationship, demonstrating the journey from happiness to heartbreak and all of the places in between. This was seen in the opening track titles ‘I Want What You Got’ and ‘Have Faith’, which then descended into despair in tracks like ‘It’s Over’ and ‘Bitter’.
In my opinion this didn’t correlate with the atmosphere of the venue and the crowd, who started off so mellow, sombrely swaying along to the music, but ended up jumping around by the end of the night. The mood surprised me as I had thought it would be a very calm evening due to the 6/8 lilting lullaby feel of their music that I usually listen to whilst napping. Palace also seemed taken aback by this response, which became apparent when front man, Leo Wyndham announced ‘we don’t usually get mosh pits at our gigs..’
At times the lyrics of the songs were unintelligible, but Wyndham’s voice is so emotive that the message he is trying to convey through his songs comes across regardless. Drawing comparisons to Jeff Buckley, one of the bands main sources of inspiration, his voice has a resonance and a power that doesn’t look like it would come out of his lovely lanky body.
Palace have their own sound for sure, described by DIY mag as a ‘part-bluesy, woozy embrace’, which is definitely a good thing as it means that they have a very strong identity as a band. However, it also means that at times a lot of the songs have a tendency to merge into one another. Despite this, all of their songs are very well crafted and memorable, from the originality in the haunting melodies to the complex guitar lines and lyrical content.
You can catch them at lots of festivals over the summer – Latitude, Kendal Calling, and Festival No.6 to name but a few.
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