Palberta is a three-piece rock band with no guitarist, a bassist or a drummer. Or, to place it one other means, Palberta is a band with three of every of these issues: Onstage and on its information, Ani Ivry-Block, Lily Konigsberg and Nina Ryser commerce devices between almost each tune and harmonize with a close to familial tightness that makes the very notion of a frontperson appear absurd. “It seems like we share a mind in a variety of methods, at this level,” Konisberg mentioned in 2018. It type of seems like that, too.
Palberta is hardly the primary group to deal with its lineup like a self-contained revolving door — the Olympia indie legends Beat Taking place did one thing related within the early Eighties, a few decade earlier than any member of Palberta was born — however the method matches effectively with the airtight and playfully disorienting emotions evoked by Palberta’s sound. Plus, onstage particularly, it’s a useful method to scramble one-dimensional expectations about ladies enjoying music: Earlier than anybody can attempt to make sense of them inside stale, acquainted stereotypes — oh, so she’s the extroverted lead singer; that have to be the cool, indifferent bass participant — the members of Palberta have moved onto their subsequent configuration.
Since assembly at Bard Faculty almost a decade in the past, Ivry-Block, Konigsberg and Ryser have regularly constructed a status as one of the dynamic stay acts in New York’s D.I.Y. scene (and one of the woefully missed in the course of the pandemic). Listening to one in all its early information evokes eavesdropping on a bunch of associates with a shared, secret language, however seeing them stay is like having at the very least a few of its inside jokes defined. Its newest album, “Palberta5000,” although, is a welcoming entry level for these not beforehand clued into this insular world: It’s an try and steadiness Palberta’s art-rock influences with its earnest love of extra mainstream music (Avril Lavigne, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber alongside extra area of interest influences), and is emblematic of a era of underground musicians that now not attracts such clear traces between punk and pop artistry.
That’s to not say any of those songs are polished or populist sufficient to be Scorching 100-bound — Palberta stays elementally odd, in its compositional method as a lot as its subject material. On “Palberta5000” songs about animals (“Purple Antz,” “The Cow”) almost outnumber songs about different folks, whereas “Eggs n’ Bac’” is a hard-rocking ode to — you guessed it — scorching breakfast.
A number of the only moments on this album come up from hooks that in the first place appear straightforwardly catchy and thematically summary earlier than repetition transforms them into one thing haunting and resonant. “Yeah, I can’t faux what I need,” they sing jauntily on “Massive Dangerous Need,” an imagistic daydream during which the mute eyes of a horse replicate again the narrator’s personal anxiousness. The standout “Fragile Place” pushes this uncanny feeling even additional, because the band members harmonize round a repeated phrase that signifies psychological unease: “Hey, in a fragile place.” Palberta makes use of the methods of pop construction right here to a destabilizing impact: These are the sorts of hooks that implore you to sing alongside earlier than you fairly notice what you’re singing about.
Earlier Palberta albums had sharp edges and proud imperfections: Guttural grunts, occasional bust-up laughter, and among the strangest covers of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” and Corridor & Oates’ “Wealthy Lady” ever recorded. At their most meta, it was generally tough to know if the members of Palberta have been enjoying in a rock band or making enjoyable of enjoying in a rock band, although their greatest songs — like “The Sound of the Beat” and “Gimme Every thing You Received Lady,” each from their anarchic 2018 launch “Roach Going Down” — have been those that in some way managed to do each directly.
“Palberta5000,” the primary album it recorded with the producer Matt Labozza, has a newfound lucidity and oomph with out sounding over-rehearsed, seemingly as a result of the band recorded it in simply 4 days and by no means tried greater than three takes for every tune. It is usually price mentioning that the studio the place they recorded the album is “within the unique dwelling and household lamp retailer” of “Pee-wee” actor Paul Reubens, a element that — being directly humorous and faintly cursed — is completely Palberta.
“Palberta5000” is animated by the strain of contrasts — between pop catchiness and punk sensibility; between readability and confusion; between quaking dysfunction and a foundational solidarity. The careening riffs and tumbling percussion of “Fragile Place” makes the tune sound prefer it’s being recorded in a home that’s collapsing round them. However on the heart of all of it are these intertwined voices, so locked in pleasant concord that they appear ecstatically oblivious to, and protected from, the chaos round them.
Palberta
“Palberta5000”
(Wharf Cat)
