A sliding riff which prangs and chimes all at the moment. A dead-pan vocal, not rather sprechstimme, not rather sung: “It’s us / once more / in a / predicament”. The clumsiness of that closing term, slightly archaic, oddly formal, seemingly with one much too a lot of syllables, somehow gels in the off-kilter groove, at one particular with the ramshackle shuffle.
In some strategies ‘Predicament’, the fourth observe on Kamikaze Palm Tree’s new album Mint Chip, appears like it like it could be the concept tune to a shed Hanna-Barbera sitcom. But together with that cartoonish familiarity are digressions into some thing unfamiliar. The whole album seems to improve more parts every single time you listen to it. As if the band located a way to crack the produce-file-launch sequence and instead sneak into your household to keep including to the recording.
Kamikaze Palm Tree are San Francisco-primarily based Dylan Hadley (drums and vocals) and Cole Berliner (guitars), joined on Mint Chip by bassist Josh Puklavetz, Laena Myers Ionita on clarinet, and Brad Caulkins on violin. The duo’s previous album, Fantastic Boy, swung from jangly pop into clangorous chug. Reside at KALX sounded at moments like the Velvet Underground doing spiritual jazz. Mint Chip proceeds this unpredictable trajectory. The sharp dynamics of Superior Boy are gone, as has the dwell album’s dreamy collage truly feel. In their area is a richer palette and greater clarity. The band yanking a new bizarreness from sounds that initially feel kitsch or retro.
Opener ‘Flamingo’s sophisticated major-line tangles by means of angular guitar and slippery bass. ‘Smoke On The Milk, But My War’, journeys from bluegrass licks into grungey strums. In other places are wonky synth pop excursions, mutant folks rock and, on ‘Club Banger’, a creaking, surreal ballad. All over, Hadley’s vocals have shades of both of those Nico and The Raincoats’ Ana Da Sliva. Kamikaze Palm Tree’s songs is reminiscent of the range of Haha Sound-era Broadcast if you changed their spectral pop with a flavor for region tunes twang and theatrical write-up-punk.
Mint Chip is whole of misdirection but by no means feels contrived. It is most pronounced on ‘The Hit’. The rolling piano and fuzz-led verses are the album’s brightest second. But in the earth Kamikaze Palm Tree develop, it feels only organic the mid-portion seems like alien sounds from a sci-fi b-film.
Their music are tightly composed, danceable streams of consciousness. Indirect lyrical shifts matched by unexpected jumps into zig-zag rhythms. But these are tangents relatively than non-sequiturs, riding a meandering nonetheless coherent practice of assumed. Kamikaze Palm Tree locate anything joyous in embracing rather than shying absent from digressions. As Hadley sings on ‘The Hit’, “There is no wrong door.”
