Palberta

Great debut LP (following a tour­split with NE Patriots, FTR166) by this upstate NY trio. It’s actually the vinylization of their OSR cassette, but now it’s a record and that’s all the better for you. Their sound immediately strikes one’s ear as brimming with the anarcho-squeak ­aggression of Switzerland’s Kleenex, but that’s just the initial impression.

Palberta’s actual brunt is thoroughly warped in an all­-American style, smelling of tent parties in the piney woods and much as sweat­stained house shows in the valleys of the Northeast Kingdom. They take pains to stretch their compositions in a lot of strange simultaneous directions, which both reference and deny the influence of early Rough Trade recording acts. Their brilliantly sloppy experimentalism is one of those sounds that will grow in the creases of yr brain like a lovely fungus. You’ll only know you’ve “arrived” when you’d sprouted a full head of mushroom antlers.

Go ahead, take the Palberta challenge. Today.

– Byron Coley, 2014