Palm Ghosts

Sept 5, 2023 - Today, Nashville, Tennessee&#39;s Palm Ghosts announce the release of their forthcoming album, I Love You, Burn In Hell, via a partnership between Sweet Cheetah Records, Poptek Records, Sell The Heart Records, and Engineer Records (EU/UK). The album sees release on November 10. The album was recorded, mixed and produced by Joseph Lekkas at Greenland Studios in Nashville and mastered by Dan Coutant at Sun Room Mastering. Palm Ghosts deliver the sound of an &#39;80s prom in a war zone. As far from the honky-tonks and pedal taverns of their adopted city as one can get, this is a trio who are clearly more at home in rainy Manchester or blustery Berlin, as they produce their amalgam of cinematic dream pop and new wave with brooding post punk. In 2018 they released Architecture, a dark pop record with male/ female vocals and their first offering echoing the sound of 4AD and Factory Records’ brand of post punk. Since then, they have built upon that release with a steady stream of songs invigorating the modern era with the &#39;80s youth ethos, and paying homage to idols like New Order, The Cure, Echo and The Bunnymen and Peter Gabriel to name a few. During the worldwide pandemic, Palm Ghosts recorded and released Lifeboat Candidate to critical acclaim. The record was a giant ear worm on unrest, isolation, and frustration influenced by the jagged art punk of Gang of Four and Wire. The band’s next offering, The Lost Frequency, felt more whimsical and celebratory. More nostalgic and less like a war . . . more like a prom. However, the lyrics still bring confrontation to the forefront, and remind us that normalcy is still devastating. Post Preservation showed yet another side of Palm Ghosts. There were songs about love with almost a hint of optimism. If you squint your eyes, a faint light through the cracks, but with plenty of darkness and discontent for balance. Like the soundtrack to a long lost John Hughes film, Post Preservation twinkles with warm nostalgia for a world that no longer exists, except for in our hearts and minds. Their forthcoming offering, I Love You, Burn in Hell, is another slab of discontent and disillusionment. Melodic songs about betrayal, exploitation and the hopeless task of navigating the modern world, wrapped up in catchy melodies and propulsive rhythms. The world is ending, for god’s sake. Get on the dance floor!

I Love You, Burn In Hell

On March 19, Nashvile's Palm Ghosts will release their full-length album, Lifeboat Candidate (pre-order). Today the band presents the album's first single "Blind." The official video for the song, which was created by band member Ben Douglas, premiered today at Post-Punk and track will be on all streaming services this Friday to add to your favorite playlists.
Equal hints of Gang of Four and Peter Gabriel, "Blind" was written and recorded during the social unrest of Summer, 2020. The single was one of the first songs from the forthcoming album and demonstrates the tribal rhythm that permeates the entire record. This song also set the tone for the recording process of the entire record in which the band emailed track ideas, instrumentals, song structures, lyrics and melodies. The fruits of that labor resulted in the album, Lifeboat Candidate, a dark and dystopian effort, filled with confusion and dread, albeit with a bit of humor and hope. The album is a relentless statement, not giving a pause between tracks to breathe like the micro machines spokesman, yet as suave as Dean Stockwell in Blue Velvet.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Palm Ghosts has a long history, as Joseph Lekkas has carried the name since his Philly days when the project had an indie folk sound. It is the current iteration of the band that sounds more like a clap back to the sound for which Nashville is notorious. Embracing their 80’s idols, like New Order, The Cure, David Bowie, John Carpenter and even Divine, these Nashville transplants released 2018’s Architecture. With a steady stream of singles and EPs, the band has continued to write music that sums up the lot of their 80’s influences, but Lifeboat Candidate marks their most cohesive effort to date.
Like most bands in 2020, isolation fueled a new immediacy and energy in their songs that only a year of pandemic, protest, and political turmoil could elicit. "Blind," the album opener, is about suspicion and paranoia standing in the way of truly seeing people, and consequently sounds like a comment thread of mired arguments over an underlying harmony. The frenzied "Dead Inside" is almost an extension of that theme, where the narrator is frozen in the space between self preservation and empathic change when becoming aware of a world bigger than their own, yet ultimately deciding to treat the epiphany as a con. Because we aren’t completely pessimistic, we thought you should also check out "Carry the World," inspired by stories of family separation in scientology and the struggle against beliefs that make strangers of those closest to you. In the verses, one party pleads with the other to leave the belief and the chorus responds…favorably. We aren’t completely hopeless, but then this was before our city was bombed by a 5G conspiracy terrorist.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Lifeboat Candidate

Nashvile's Palm Ghosts will release their anticipated new full-length album, The Lost Frequency on November 19. The Lost Frequency follows up the band's acclaimed album Lifeboat Candidate which was released earlier this year. Lifeboat Candidate is a giant ear worm on unrest, isolation, and frustration. While the world has not changed much since then, Palm Ghosts' new album The Lost Frequency is different. It is an album lost to the pandemic (literally it was supposed to be released last year). It hearkens back to before this life in stasis, back to when things were almost normal, which is what we are all clamoring for again - normalcy…a sense of calm after a year lost.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Today the band is pleased to share "Bloodlight," the album's opener and first single to be lifted from the forthcoming release. The song debuted today at Post-Punk and will be on all streaming platforms this Friday for any playlist shares.&nbsp;
On the song, Palm Ghosts' Joseph Lekkas says, "'Bloodlight' is a dark dance track that compares the climate crisis to a crime scene." He adds, "Luminol is a chemical commonly used in forensics for the detection of blood stains. Nothing vanishes without a trace and particles of blood adhere to surfaces for years. The same applies to what humans have done to the earth. The damage will remain long after we are gone."
The sound of an 80s prom in a war zone…located in the dead heart of country music, Nashville, TN. That is the sound and spirit of Palm Ghosts, as far from the honky-tonks and pedal taverns of their adopted city as one can get. More at home in rainy Manchester or blustery Berlin, the quartet weaves early cinematic dream pop and new wave with brooding post punk. Embracing their 80’s idols, like New Order, The Cure, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, and even Divine to name a few, these Nashville transplants released 2018’s Architecture. Since then, they have built upon that release with a steady stream of songs invigorating the modern era with the 80’s youth ethos.&nbsp;&nbsp;
In that sense, the music of The Lost Frequency feels almost whimsical and celebratory, at least less antagonistic and snarky than Lifeboat Candidate felt, but it certainly is nostalgic and less like a war, more like a prom. However, the lyrics still bring confrontation to the forefront, and remind us that normalcy is still devastating.&nbsp;
The Lost Frequency’s album opener, "Bloodlight," imagines global warming as a crime scene. Then, "Young Empire" spryly scolds American culture as a stubborn, petulant child before jumping back to global destruction themes in The Painful Truth. These songs could be a trilogy, as if the world were a disco ball smashing to the ground over which dancers continue to tread, oblivious to the cutting shards.&nbsp;&nbsp;
All this stasis, this waiting around and growing impatience, means the band has a huge backlog of new music to unleash, and if you still need convincing that you don’t need to be a prom wallflower and can get on the dance floor.&nbsp;

ReleaseWave

Palm Ghosts

Releases

I Love You, Burn In Hell

Lifeboat Candidate

The Lost Frequency

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