Palm - Ostrich Vacation (2015)

Hello Spacerock mountaineers,

Inspired by Antarktikos' recent post, I've decided to "get the lead out" and also thrust my fingers at the keyboard in a violent manner, hoping it'll make sense in the end.

Palm is a 4 piece, modern rock band who formed out of the Hudson Valley of upstate New York. They've since relocated to Philadelphia, lucky for me as I've moved from the young adult playground that is Portland, Oregon to the senior citizen waiting room that is Allentown, Pennsylvania. Palm seems to tour a lot so I hope to get a babysitter for whatever day that may be in the near future (check their bandcamp page for upcoming dates - European dates as well).

Ostrich Vacation is Palm's earliest release available on Bandcamp, and it's their only "pay what you want" offering... which I love because I'm both cheap and poor. It was originally released on cassette, still available here, as a part of a 6 part, 6 band series collectively called "Organechs".

This release finds the band in their primordial stage, where they were honing their skills more as instrumentalists than vocalists. The crux of Palm's early era is dissonant guitars wired into a series of dizzying yet tappable drum rhythms. If we're talking about genres and how this sound fits into some sort of lineage, you can hear elements of post-punk and post-rock, but Palm has taken those leftovers and elevated them into a unique dish, and as their later releases would display they truly walk a line
between accessible and inaccessible like, perhaps, no other band I've ever heard.

Fascinating and always offering something new with repeated listens, Ostrich Vacation is like an impressionist painting of a band on their way to becoming skilled pointillists.


Palm - Ostrich Vacation