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Nicks and Grazes

by Palm

supported by
bruhman64
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bruhman64 This album is a relic of a lost sky civilization Favorite track: On The Sly.
petalslip
petalslip thumbnail
petalslip Thanks for the future memories.
When I listen to Tumbleboy, it feels like a celebration of life. An inescapable yearning to experience everything that is and was in the microscopically finite sliver of time we’re alive.
Beauty comes in many forms, and this is the kind that plays my emotions like a tornado plays a keyboard.
Call it corny, but this kind of authentic joy (and a spectrum of other emotions) doesn’t leave me the same as I started. Favorite track: Tumbleboy.
Lizard Tunnel
Lizard Tunnel thumbnail
Lizard Tunnel It’s hard to imagine earthlings are capable of making music like this, Palm is on a whole other level Favorite track: Parable Lickers.
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1.
Touch and Go 02:50
blush like the senator flip the scene on the abacus you're touched by the rabbit on the run drooping trees drool in analog i could be what you want me to be cuz im back and forth as a permanent gesture touch and go like a born again demagogue on and off its my current obsession touch and go if you’ll ever be left alone
2.
Feathers 04:15
long before i felt impossible i saw a ten pin bowl i heard the rhythm of error make it up like a performer make it up like i'm devout i don’t wanna be a passenger i don't wanna see you calendar ima make it up as i go ima make it up as i go i don’t wanna be a passenger i don't wanna see you calendar ima make it up as i go ima make it up as i go you can look around and ill know all we need is time to let go ima make it up as i go ima make it impossible slept on your impressions complex and adamant i felt the logic of feathers i felt the logic of feathers make it up like a performer make it up like I'm devout make it up
3.
you tap in as i tap out even i know solitude summoned by a rectangle you're practiced and elaborate sharpen this fool redder than a wrestler sharpen this fool i am not the reckoner brother all the furniture reclines when you’re gone rise and fall like parable lickers devotion lickers devotion sharpen this fool redder than a wrestler sharpen this fool i am not the reckoner brother i'm the reckon collector but I'm full i'm your undivided attention but i'm gone tension when I'm not sharpen this fool redder than a wrestler sharpen this fool i am not the reckoner
4.
Eager Copy 03:50
5.
Brill 00:56
6.
On The Sly 03:28
has the gore toggled your on and off balance on the sly have you got calendar carnivores camping on your mind are you not quite so bendable end it all you’re louder than tranquil have the cops taken off are you not tangled on the sly has it all come to not are you afraid that you’re natural of the earth or of the culture tangible solid and you're solid all the time natural like an ocean or like children tangible solid like you’re onto something wild imitate your brother or the copper violence as an active thought intonate the rocker you’re the drop-off i could never scatter far abdicate your coffers for the others implicate the ravenous animate your troubles till they’re puzzled taken by the calendar are the thoughts obstacles are you not tangled on the sly have you got cavernous apertures fixing for another angle end it all i forgot to want to end it all watch me on the rise end it all i forgot to want to end it all watch me on the way up
7.
And Chairs 01:35
8.
Away Kit 03:41
9.
10.
11.
Glen Beige 02:53
demonic or televangelical the shadow of your shadow song you're buoyant or you're in the tidal flow of cortisol you won the raffle they’re fully formed clutching the license for the formless collapse of cards grinning the sinister operation i’m 44 like i’m inaudible i’ve fallen short i’m hyperbole uncurable imma get cannoned for the pleasure of having another one your cousin called he’s in the shadows of the purposeful forfeiture grinning the sinister operation i'm gullible i’ll believe what you want i’m moldable the shape of dirt you bought car and let me ride along you play your song and sing it all wrong i’m content to hold like i didn’t know that i could let go i’ve been feeling bold like i didn’t know that i could cower i’m all up in arms i’m already gone the shape of dirt
12.
Tumbleboy 06:04
i dropped your voice it fell through the cracks in the floor reminds me of the rung of four the way i keep rotting the apples there are many tumbles i perform tumbles you ignore i’m your headache but still you don’t wish me away tell you again that i’m the luckiest boy cuz there are many tumbles i perform tumbles you ignore tumbles i’ve implored restless sentiment — half of what i’ve done half the words i’ve sung are interchangeable with the look upon your eyes when you see through my disguise half of what i wrote half the thoughts not spoke are barely legible except that i’m not your tumbleboy i just tumble a lot
13.

about

Palm’s live performances are revered for their uncanny synchronicity; one gets the sense that, on psychic levels unseen, the members share an intuition unexplained by logic. But as the Philly-based band has grown up and moved on from the sweaty basement shows and self-booked tours of their formative years, the costs of maintaining such intense symbiosis started to build. “I used to think of Palm as an organism, a single coherent system, and at a younger point in our lives, that seemed like the ideal way to be a band,” Eve Alpert reflects. “I’m realizing now that it’s unrealistic, that for this band to grow we had to tend to ourselves as individuals – little pieces – who create the whole.”

To confuse parts for the whole is inevitable with Palm. Drummer Hugo Stanley, bassist Gerasimos Livitsanos and guitarists/vocalists/high school sweethearts Alpert and Kasra Kurt started making music together as teenagers, and spent much of their twenties in the kind of proximity unusual for adults, outside of touring bands and the International Space Station. For a number of years the band consumed the lives of its members to a point of exhaustion: “To be honest I think we got a little burnt out. There were times where it wasn’t clear if we’d make another record,” says Alpert. It was only after multiple freak injuries followed by a pandemic, forced a pause - from touring but also from writing, rehearsing, even seeing each other- that the four were able to regroup and see a way forward again.

On their latest effort, Nicks and Grazes, Palm embrace discordance to dazzling effect. “We wanted to reconcile two potentially opposing aesthetics,” Kurt says. “To capture the spontaneous, free energy of our live shows while integrating elements from the traditionally gridded palette of electronic music.” In order to avoid what Kurt refers to as “Palm goes electro,” the musicians spent years educating themselves on the ins and outs of production by learning Ableton while also experimenting with “the percussive, textural, and gestural potential” of their instruments. To this end, the band continued the age-old tradition of instrument-preparation, augmenting guitars with drumsticks, metal rods and, at the suggestion of Charles Bullen (This Heat, Lifetones), coiling rubber-coated gardening wire around the strings. The unruliness of the prepared guitar on songs like “Mirror Mirror” and “Eager Copy” contrasts with the steadfast reproducibility of the album’s electronic elements.

While Palm cite Japanese pop music, dub, and footwork as influences on this album’s sonic palette, they found themselves returning time and again to the artists who inspired them to start the group over a decade ago. “When we were first starting out as a band, we bonded over an appreciation of heavy, aggressive, noisy music,” Alpert reflects. “We wrote parts that were just straight-up metal.” Kurt adds, “I found myself rediscovering and re–falling in love with the visceral, jagged quality of guitars in the music of Glenn Branca, The Fall, Beefheart, and Sonic Youth, all important early Palm influences.” Returning to the fundamentals gave Palm a strong foundation upon which they could experiment freely, resulting in their most ambitious and revelatory album to date.

“Music isn’t about things. It is things,” Richard Powers wrote in his novel Orfeo. While making Nicks and Grazes, Kurt found himself returning to this quote as a guiding philosophy as Palm spent days and months on end working out songs together in their practice space. Though a single narrative remains elusive, Stanley points out echoes of the members’ individual and collective experiences in the use of samples. Snippets of conversation on tour in Spain, the blare of a Philly high school marching band’s early morning practice, and the refracted reverberations of Palm’s friend Paco Cathcart performing as The Cradle are just a few examples of daily sonic flotsam the band incorporated with instrumentation to create a new communal experience. The album’s titular track is a prime example; Anderegg combined the band’s disparate field recordings into a diaristic kaleidoscope of sound, as much a collection of memories as it is its own composition. “We’re constantly grabbing at sounds that move us,” Stanley says. “In a sense, the record is cobbled together from these pieces of our lives.”

credits

released October 14, 2022

Producer: Matt Anderegg
Mixer: Matt Anderegg and Matt Labozza
Recording Engineer: Matt Labozza
Mastering Engineer: Ryan Schwabe

Composed by
Eve Alpert
Hugo Stanley
Gerasimos Livitsanos
Kasra Kurt

Performed by
Eve Alpert
Gerasimos Livitsanos
Hugo Stanley
Kasra Kurt
Matt Anderegg

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Palm Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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