London’s Palace has just released Fade, a sensual, trance-like indie rock experience. It’s set to appear on their forthcoming album, Shoals.
Palace’s frontman Leo Wyndham says that “Shoals is a record about confronting our own fears and anxieties.” With the driving, incessant rhythms and abrasive distorted textures that are explored on the fresh single, Fade, you might wonder if the band is leaning into that sense of tension, rather than attempting to conquer it.
That said, Fade is not a maddening experience. Rather, its pounding grooves and cathedral-like ambience hypnotises. There’s no doubting its tendency toward the tonal tropes of rock, but they prove that there’s still plenty of scope for mystery.
There are nods to fellow Brits in the way Palace treats guitar in this track. You can hear the urgency of Radiohead in its rhythms and cavernous reverbs of early-era Coldplay. The refreshing thing about Fade is the combination of the two environments: there are sounds that feel close enough to touch, then there are those that could be coming from another dimension (or dredged up from your subconscious, perhaps). But it all works naturally together.
Then there is the focal point: the voice of Wyndham. A gentle croon that arrives as a melodic whisper, to be joined by even more delicate harmonies, reaching its celestial climax on the refrain: “Am I paranoid?” Well, if you weren’t, you might be after listening to this.
It all adds up to an experience that you won’t soon forget. Palace makes use of tried and tested tools, yet shape the track into something that exists inside and outside the confines of indie rock.
