Review Summary: Struggling for progress through peaks and valleys.
Palms is widely viewed as the most generic Thrice offering. The lyrics further decline from the mediocre-at-best
To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere pages, and it has some of the worst songs of the band’s twenty year career. Those are some damning flaws right off the bat, but there are reasons for optimism.
Palms’ uneven ground also affords it some superb heights. It’s a riskier album than
To Be Everywhere…,
Major/Minor, and even
Beggars, but after three albums of steady alt-rock, isn’t that exactly what you’d want to see? Thrice’s gambles obviously do not hit at a perfect clip, but the peaks are higher than the valleys are low – and if that’s the cost of progress, then I’d say it’s well worth enduring a few ear-grating minutes to get through ‘Hold Up a Light.’
Thrice very subtly shift their core sound on
Palms. The previous two records felt stuck in a singular mode, this endless series of gruff requiems for a broken society. While
Palms still sees a few tracks continue trekking down that path, it’s the departures that feel like an open window in spring after spending the winter shut-in with the same old stagnant air. The band is a lot more willing to vary the tempo here, and it results in a record that breathes instead of feeling rigid. ‘The Dark’ is one of the best examples, as the sparseness of the verses (Dustin’s laments underscored by an organ) are brilliantly contrasted by the refrain, which culminates in a chorus of over one thousand fans singing. ‘Just Breathe’ is another album highlight, which sees Kensrue finally alter his vocal register to something more soothing than his standard rock vocals. The chorus sways atop the more earthly clattering of guitars and drums from beneath it, but eventually the ethereal side of the track prevails when Dustin is joined by backing vocalist Emma Ruth Rundle to form a beautiful duet/outro. This is the sort of thing that
To Be Everywhere and
Major/Minor lacked – a second dimension to the music to make it feel splendorous rather than dry and straight-forward.
Palms plays its ace late on the penultimate ‘Blood on Blood’, a shimmering, harp-laden gem that eschews Thrice’s recent trend of adhering to very simple song structures.
Not every song aspires to the beautiful peaks of ‘The Dark’, ‘Just Breathe’, and ‘Blood on Blood’, but Thrice ensures that
Palms’ core is comprised of ever-shifting tones and dynamics. ‘Everything Belongs’ and ‘My Soul’ contribute to the record’s atmospheric side, even if the lyrics on the latter are abysmal (“What if I'm broken from the start, and what if I never heal? Are you ready for my soul?”). The former actually gets its share of unfair dismissal, with gorgeous pianos and a breathtaking vocal performance from Dustin; the chorus is unfortunately just boring enough (the cardinal sin of repeating the song title) to undo the momentum accrued. ‘Only Us’ and ‘The Grey’ are good-not-great alt-rock tracks that pack a lot of energy but aren’t necessarily memorable, and would have fit in better on either of the two preceding LPs. ‘A Branch in the River’ comes as a pleasant surprise, adopting a somewhat-experimental electric guitar progression and pairing it with a very infectious, if overproduced, chorus. The track culminates in a riffy, intensely discordant outro which sees Thrice realizing their heavier roots once again.
Palms could have benefited from more songs like this to better counterbalance its softer edges, but it’s a boon to the album nevertheless.
The obvious throwaway is ‘Hold Up a Light’, whose mind-numbing simplicity and uninspired chorus are more reminiscent of Nickelback than Thrice. When paired with some of
Palms’ more middling tracks, such as ‘Everything Belongs’ and ‘My Soul’, it makes up a third of the album which is clearly problematic. Even ‘Beyond the Pines’, whose aura
feels like it should be more affecting than it actually is, could fit into the same category (the “minute if silence to reflect upon what the album means to you” at the end is as shoehorned and hackneyed as anything else they’ve done post-hiatus). While it’s clear that
Palms has its share of ill-conceived ideas, it’s the pinnacles that remind us who Thrice is capable of becoming again – a band that balances its more aggressive rock edge with ambience and actual atmosphere. There’s something to be said for consistency – which
Palms lacks – but when given the choice between the status quo or struggling for progress, I’ll take the latter every time.
