Los Palms: Los Palms
LP | CD | DL
Out now
Australia’s garage-psych band Los Palms return with their self-titled new album, a sidewinding and immersive soundtrack to the greatest spaghetti-western never set to celluloid.
Okay, so bands like Kyuss may have laid claim to the desert-psych sound, their stoner rock kicking up dust through pure power, but let’s flip the coin and see what really conjures up that expansive, sun-soaking-through-sand-filled-air vibe. Like we said when we reviewed their debut album, Los Palms deal songs “packed full of reverb-soaked, jangle-twang neo-psych garage, a line drawn clearly from the early purveyors like Los Saicos up to their labelmates Night Beats“.
Now that is the kind of desert-psych I want. The kind that rolls over you, close your eyes and picture yourself wandering alone through expanses. It is the feeling that they conjure up as the songs breathe deeply, space allowing the muted strums and picks of the guitar, fed through a subtle reverb, to ring out, horns and keys floating beneath the surface, adding to the whole atmosphere they create. On early stand-out, Step Back, they are masters, the song revelling in an orchestral beauty. The band are so confident in what they do, in the crafting of soundscapes, that, for the last two minutes, they simply step back from the forefront and allow the music to wash over you.
In this respect, the album is a massive step forward from their debut. Time almost stands still on the wonderful mid-album couplet of Eleven Thirty Three and Sorrows, but tracks like Way Too Cold and Fooled Me still draw a line between the two albums. They kick up the tempo a touch, that early Allah-Las style injecting more energy and groove into proceedings. Still, the haze never truly lifts, the sepia filter always there as the sun beats down. Way Too Cold also delivers a jewel in the saturated and piercing fuzz-driven solo that closes the song.
It is that added urgency that the band take into the closing of the album as The Most Beautiful Death practically gallops, a true spaghetti-western rollick that drops down into an almost pained lament. It is a dramatic closing, a worthy end to a fantastic album.
Los Palms are on Facebook, Instagram and Bandcamp.
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Words by Nathan Whittle. Find his Louder Than War archive here.
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