The Syncopated Sun of Palm’s Rock Island

Guitarist Eve Alpert (left) and bassist Gerasimos Livitsanos (right)

Palm at the Rickshaw Stop, a classic San Francisco spot termed by Google Maps as a “hip indie music venue” (haha). Consequently, it was appropriate to see a Philadelphia band that began playing together as students at Bard College and have been making it as a rock band ever since graduating in 2013. Palm is in the midst of a busy U.S. tour supported by their solid Philly friends, The Spirit of the Beehive, before they head to Europe with their new album Rock Island (2018). I made the trip to the Fell St. venue with two friends who were a bit worn down after getting back to Berkeley at 3:30 AM the night before, making the admirable four hour trek to catch Palm in Reno, Nevada. So naturally, we stood right in the front, pressed against the stage just a foot or two away from it all. We were so right up in their grill that it felt a bit awkward each time I took my phone out for a picture. It was a much bigger crowd than they were expecting, one that even took to moshing for a bit – a rarity for a Palm show – although it was mostly triggered by some dudes behind us choking each other out (?) that were not very representative of the band nor their audience. Though the crowd certainly lived up to its “hip indie” description, and we might’ve been the least cool people there, it’s always awesome going to a general admin show with $12 tickets to see a band kill it.

To a first-time listener, Palm can seem a bit overwhelming. Their jagged and jarring melodies on top of crazy syncopations and time changes can deceive the listener of their self-professed “feel-based intentionality.” They have cultivated a style all their own that’s built on punch and precision. Armed with a Stratocaster each, the two singing guitarists Eve Alpert and Kasra Kurt punctuated each sequence with reverb-ridden guitar lines and airy vocal harmonies that marked Palm’s eponymously sunbaked style. The erratically creative accents of Hugo Stanley’s three-piece drum kit (ornamented with a mounted effect pad) worked in conjunction with the anchoring groove of Gerasimos Livitsanos’ Hohner bass as every instrument of Palm’s four-piece played a part in their musical identity. Guitars bounced down wild, ad-libbed excursions into the noisey dissonance that distinguished their live set from the organized chaos of their recordings. It was during these moments of spontaneity that it was most clear how comfortable they were playing together, communicating with quick glances and subtle queues keeping them in time. There were some insular moments where it seemed like they were just jamming and having fun, hitting their marks with the same casual passion that could just as well have been in somebody’s basement rather than a big-city venue. Still, the quality of their live sound was about as close as a band could hope to get to that of their studio-mixed record.

What’s most impressive about Palm’s live set is how tight they are. It’s not easy to cover the kind of dynamic range they do in one song, changing tempo and tone on a dime. Don’t try and count their rhythms because you can’t. They rarely settle into a groove for very long, but when they do, it’s all the more rewarding. “Walkie Talkie” set the tone for their show in its all-around expression of what Palm is all about – a punch of variety, detail, and feel. Sticky vocal melodies like the wry “Composite” complaint that “you only like me in my most peculiar state/ But I can harvest all the soft illusions central to your game” glide above the groove before the song becomes a jerky, rhythmic enigma of build up and breakdown. They opted to play a new, unreleased song along with numerous tracks off Rock Island and a couple from their 2017 EP Shadow Expert rather than anything off their first LP Trading Basics (2015). We were even graced with an encore – there was none in Reno the night before. Energized by an encouraging crowd, Palm played a tight set with the confidence and cohesion that every rock band should.

Written by Gabriel Giammarco