Chapel Club - Palace

As yet another of those “big in 2011” bands, the five-piece London band’s debut album has a lot of hype to live up to. The album, Palace (interesting fact: Palace was originally the name of the band) comes across as a mixed bag of tracks covering a wide spectrum, but is too much?

Palace gets off to an inspiring start. First track ‘Depths’ is a big build up to the rest of the album and at nearly two minutes of instrumental, it’s a brave move on the part of the band. The chorus of second track ‘Surfacing’ is an interesting cover of Louis Armstrong’s ‘Dream A Little Dream.’ Lewis Bowman’s mournful tones add extra depth to the track, along with slight lyric changes, for example “Birds singing in the sycamore trees”, has been changed to “Bodies swaying in the sycamore trees.” A wise, if slightly dark, choice for a single release. After this, the album kick starts with the more upbeat ‘Five Trees’ and goes on to a number of slightly too similar tracks.

Songs compromising of heavy guitars and deep vocals carry the album until the twist comes with ‘Fine Line’. After this Palace gets a more pop twist, starting to sound less like Nick Cave and more like the Mystery Jets, particularly in ‘O Maybe I’. The pop lyrics reach a climax on ‘All The Eastern Girls,’ with lyrics such as “This is a love song [repeat]”. Although this is clearly drivelling, it almost comes as a welcome change from the metaphors and references to Greek mythology found in the previous tracks.

Overall Palace is an average album. The first half of the album tries too hard to be clever and smart, the second half doesn’t try hard enough and Bowman’s vocals are wasted on pop songs. It’s still a decent listen; it just doesn’t meet the high standards set by the media. It might’ve been better had they just crept from the woodwork with no hype at all and took me by surprise…

★★☆☆☆

Like it? Try Nick Cave, The National, Two Door Cinema Club or Frankie & The Heartstrings

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