Palace - Life After

The Guardian 60

(Fiction)

While Palace’s 2016 debut, So Long Forever, was an accomplished enough slice of grown-up indie, it did feel a little half-hearted in places. Although the songs concerned themselves with bereavement, the marital breakup of frontman Leo Wyndham’s parents and similarly weighty topics, at times there was a detachment to his delivery that seemed at odds with the subject matter. Loss is once again a recurrent theme on the London-based group’s’s follow-up – not least on the opening title track (“She’s watching from heaven/ She’s always beside you”) and epic closer Heaven Up There – but pleasingly, Wyndham sings with far greater confidence and conviction this time.

With the band now a three-piece, following the departure of bassist Will Dorey, there’s an organic warmth to the arrangements on Life After, Rupert Turner’s guitar and Matt Hodges’ drums foregrounding Wyndham without ever stealing the spotlight, even on the more strident Running Wild (don’t be fooled by the title: it doesn’t represent a departure into freewheeling debauched rock-piggery). If there is a criticism it’s that, Martyr and Running Wild aside, there’s too little that really grabs the attention. Still, not many bands do better emotionally literate, melancholic indie at the moment.