Norman Palm is something of an individualist, to say the least. ‘Shore To Shore’ is his first proper album but he previously self released a 200 page artbook with accompanying soundtrack. It is from this fervid imagination that this record springs and it is shot through with Palm’s little idiosyncrasies.
Palm is obviously a very talented boy. An art school graduate, has his own design studio and now a burgeoning musical career, he spends his time split between Berlin and Mexico and it is this apparent restlessness, mentally and physically, that informs that fact that stylistically the album flits between styles and genres; Jose Gonzalez like understatement (‘Start/Stop’, ‘WYYD’), whimsical alt. country (‘Landslide’) and electronica driven twisted folk (‘Images’, ‘Phantom Lover’) in the main.
Some of these musical explorations are more successful than others, opener ‘Start/Stop’, ‘Phantom Lover’ and ‘Easy’ are all lovely tunes with real genre-mashing moments but others like the rather twee ‘Images’ and Death Cab-esque closer ‘Go To Sleep’ fall in to the trap of being somewhat bland in comparison.
This aside though, Palm hits the right notes rather more often than he does the bum ones and ‘Shore To Shore’ is evidence of the emergence of an interesting new talent.
Top tracks: ‘Phantom Lover’, ‘Start/Stop’.
Released March 14 through City Slang
Echo Rating< (((???)))
Posted by Dan
