Palace - 'Life After' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Life After

2. Berlin

3. Younger

4. Face In The Crowd

5. Caught My Breath

6. Martyr

7. All In My Stride

8. No Other

9. Running Wild

10. Bones

11. Heaven Up There

Following their sold out UK tour, Palace have released their new album “Life After”, the follow up to 2016’s debut “So Long Forever”. The three piece have built an extensive following through touring and have garnered critical acclaim including having the sublime “Heaven Up There” named as one of Lauren Laverne’s ‘ headphones moments’ on 6 Music.

Having been impressed by the first two singles from the album, the above “Heaven Up There” and “No Other”, I sat down to listen to this with anticipation, but after the first 2 listens it became clear that this is one of those albums that is really hard to give a definite opposable digit up or down to. On the one hand, the music and the production are top notch – it’s like taking a multi-layered aural bath every time you listen to it; but on the other, well…it ‘s like taking a multi-layered aural bath. The whole album just washes over you; there’s nothing there that really reaches out and grabs hold of me, demanding I pay it real attention. Now, normally, here is where I’d kick into a rant about how that is a major failing and the usual nonsense people have come to expect…but it feels different with Palace. In the normal scheme of things, there’d be a press release claiming that they are the saviours of modern music and should be transported, shoulder high, throughout the land on litters so that we can all marvel at their greatness. Except that here, there’s no such claim. I have been thorough (I read both sides of the press release) but there’s not even a scintilla of a claim for them to be the rootin-est, let alone the tootin-est, band there ever was (sorry, we’ve been watching a lot of Yosemite Sam cartoons!).

So to sum up – is it good? Yes it is…there are some great songs on this album and as mentioned above, the musicianship and production are brilliant. Would I buy it? I’d have to be honest and say no…it doesn’t grab me and hold my attention in the way that I want an album to.