When you get to be my age much of the experience of listening to new music is about reference points. I remember a half-decade ago hearing for the first time the song Munich by the Birmingham, England-based Editors, a dark, muscular band that managed to evoke all the grime and grit, the monotony of industrial, working-class Britain. It had touches of Liverpool’s Echo and the Bunnymen, Manchester’s Easterhouse, Leeds’ The Wedding Present, as well as consummate shoegazers such as My Bloody Valentine and Ride.
My flophouse mates and I discovered those bands while living at live music venues like Metro, the Aragon Ballroom [Brawlroom during punk shows], and the Riviera. Eyeliner was involved; clothes in colors other than black were not. Doctor Marten got a third of our incomes. We read lots of Kundera.
It is there in time that I galloped when last week I cued up “Palace,” the debut record from London’s The Chapel Club, a much-hyped [NME’s band to watch] collection of frighteningly tasty dirges that include more ‘80s indie reference points than a John Hughes movie marathon.
Perhaps I’m a sucker for this stuff given my inclinations toward nostalgia, but I find the record’s complete lack of contemporary touches in and of itself refreshing. “Palace” is less homage to smoky club days and well gin and tonics than it is a complete capture of a thousand moments that spanned four or five years when the music helped post-teenagers navigate around the sinkholes into which they were so prone to diving.
“Palace” includes no “King of the World” moment. Lyrically, it’s an exercise in introspection, best evidenced by the opening lyric to Oh Maybe I: “Maybe I should settle down to a quiet life, or maybe I should chance it all on a perfect night.” The baritone of lead singer Lewis Bowman carries us through songs that serve as chapters in a messy book that cannot be put down; a mesmerizing chunk of grey matter that provides both youthful reflection and license to explore possibility.
The Chapel Club is not fare for everyone, and it’s rather likely that it will be best received by those [like me] who appreciate atmosphere ahead of musical precision; unremarkable to most, but special to those of us who recognize its references and attach them to moments in our lives significant enough to remember.
– Mitch Hurst
